Iron, Fire, Mirror-Glass
by PurpleSoot
Summary: After a brutal confrontation with Bane, Bruce comes away with a broken spine and the certainty that his days as Batman are over. An unexpected discovery offers him another chance—but at what price? The story of a man who risks his soul for the sake of his mission, the dangerous creature he names Robin, and the unlikely partnership that will shape the legend of Gotham's Dark Knight.
1. Chapter 1

**FELURIAN**  
many of the darker sort  
would love to use you for their sport.  
what keeps these from moonlit trespass?  
iron, fire, mirror-glass.  
elm and ash and copper knives,  
solid-hearted farmer's wives  
who know the rules of games we play  
and give us bread to keep away.  
but worst of all, my people dread  
the portion of our power we shed  
when we set foot on mortal earth.

 **KVOTHE**  
We _are_ more trouble than we're worth.

-Patrick Rothfuss, _The Wise Man's Fear_

/~*~/

 **Chapter 1**

"Here we are, sir," Alfred said as he opened the car door.

Bruce placed his feet on the pavement and stood up, moving with the kind of slow, painstaking care he usually reserved for sneaking silently across rooftops. His hands only trembled slightly on the grip of the cane as he abandoned the relative safety of the car for the early spring sunshine of the Manor driveway. He hadn't taken a bad fall while trying to walk by himself in over a week—that had been one of the stipulations of his release from the hospital, actually—but there was no real need to push himself, either.

Once he was certain he was upright and staying that way, Bruce began the walk from drive to front door. There had been a time when he'd have thought nothing of crossing such a small space, barely fifteen feet and a handful of stonework stairs. He must have made the same journey ten thousand times, each one effortless, taken for granted. He had done it while running, skipping, walking backwards or with his hands full, on ice or in pouring rain, even when paying no attention as he carried on an important conversation over the phone. Now it was a daunting prospect.

One step. Two. Bruce leaned into the cane, letting it support some of his weight as he moved. Sweat beaded on his temples and the back of his neck despite the cool wind. The pain pooled, low and liquid and burning, at the base of his spine. Bruce wondered—not for the first time—how he would have managed at all, without the discipline he'd cultivated in his years of training. Even his doctors had admitted as much, albeit without understanding the reason why; they'd said more than once that Bruce was lucky he was such a dedicated athlete, because if he'd been in anything less than perfect physical condition prior to his "skiing accident," he'd probably have never walked again, with a cane or otherwise.

It took nearly a full minute, but Bruce safely reached the first stair leading up the porch. He paused for a moment, eyeing the obstacle. The cane was in his right hand, so he reached for the wrought-iron railing with his left. It was more a decorative feature than a structural one, but like everything else in the Wayne ancestral home, it had been built to last. It would hold his weight.

His right foot went first. The lifting motion was more difficult than simple walking, but not dramatically so. It wasn't until he shifted his weight, pushing himself up with the cane and left foot and pulling with his left hand, that the pain threatened to overwhelm him. Thunder roared in his ears as dizziness swept over him, and for a moment the world fell away.

Alfred's hand appeared at his elbow, anchoring him.

Bruce took one deep breath, focusing on the feel of his lungs as they first expanded, then contracted. He regained his balance, both physical and figurative, slowly collecting the frayed and ragged edges of his control.

"I'm fine, Alfred," Bruce said, voice firm.

Alfred hesitated, but only for half a heartbeat. He removed his hand and stepped back, saying only, "Of course, sir."

Bruce climbed the second stair, and then the third. He breathed in deep and released it, in and out, slow and careful. He'd spent years traveling the globe, learning from some of the most extraordinary people on the planet, and most of the techniques he'd been taught began with just this: controlled breathing, in and out, a steady rhythm.

On the fifth stair, one from the top, he was forced to stop again or risk another dizzy spell. He closed his eyes for just a few moments, turning his attention outward to find a distraction. The wind was calm and constant today, drawing waves of gentle rustling from the new spring leaves of the Manor's stately maples and oaks. There must have been a bird's nest in one of the nearby trees, because there was a never-ending chorus of chirps coming from the side garden as the new hatchlings demanded food. Far overhead, almost too far away to hear at all, there was the low hum of a passenger jet as it flew by, carrying business travelers and spring vacationers down the east coast.

"Master Bruce?"

"My bag, Alfred," Bruce said gently, without turning his head.

Alfred nodded once, although Bruce only saw it from the corner of one half-open eye. "At once, sir," he said. There was the faintest brush of fingers at Bruce's shoulder, simply a reminder that he was there, and then Alfred retreated.

Bruce took one more deep breath and climbed the final stair. From there, it was only a few steps to the front door. It took him several long, painful seconds to cross the remaining distance, one step at a time.

Alfred reappeared next to him, weighed down with the suitcase Bruce had been living out of during his stay at the hospital. He opened the front door with one hand, letting it swing wide and inviting in front of them.

"Welcome home, Master Bruce," Alfred said softly, and gestured him inside.

Bruce clenched his jaw. Then he moved the cane from the porch's sculpted stone to the foyer's polished hardwood, and stepped across the threshold.

/~*~/

Bruce had always known that Wayne Manor was vast, with its long echoing corridors and multiple unused bedrooms. He knew it the way he knew the circumference of the earth, or the boiling point of water—an academic fact, devoid of emotional resonance. He had grown up here, and while he understood on an intellectual level that his house was absurdly huge and largely vacant, he had never before felt it on a visceral level. The Manor was home, and he had always been comfortable here.

Even in the wake of his parents' murders, when the place had been painfully silent and empty, Bruce had found comfort in wandering the familiar hallways or hiding in out-of-the-way rooms where well-wishers and sympathizers couldn't find him. Solitude suited him, even as a child, and he had never outgrown that habit of retreating to seldom-used spaces when he needed to think. More than one concerned adult, be they social worker, family friend, or W.E. board member, had tried to remove him from the Manor and place him somewhere more cheerful, more child-friendly. They hadn't understood. To Bruce, the Manor had never been scary or lonely. It was his place, and he belonged there.

The week that he returned from the hospital, Bruce finally sympathized with the unease so many of his guests had tried and failed to conceal over the years. For the first time, Bruce looked around at the familiar walls and felt the massive house looming over him, cold and hollow and sinister. Where once he could have traversed the entire main section without opening his eyes, now Bruce felt like a stranger in his own home. The well-worn paths from room to room were now treacherous things, painful and dangerous to attempt alone. The outer wings and upper floors might as well have been in another world altogether, as distant and unreachable as the moon.

He did his best not to hold it against the house. It wasn't the Manor that had changed.

His days fell into a routine, not much different than the one he'd been subject to at the hospital. Alfred had taken over most of the required nursing duties, of course—it would have been embarrassing, had Bruce not been oft reminded that Alfred had changed his diapers, once upon a time—but a physical therapist still had to come for a session with him twice a day. Bruce wasn't sure if it was the Wayne name on the side of the hospital or simply the size of his bank account that had prompted his doctors to arrange for house calls, but he wasn't above taking advantage of it. It was easier, somehow, to struggle with a body that refused to work properly in the privacy of his home instead of a crowded hospital gym. If he had to show weakness, better it be in front of Alfred and a single, discreet professional than a room full of gossiping strangers.

The biggest change was the quality of the food, at least when the pain medication wasn't making him too nauseous to eat. Bruce had never been more grateful for Alfred's deft hand in the kitchen than in the immediate wake of being subjected to bland, mass-produced hospital meals. The coffee alone—when he was allowed to have it—made him feel almost human again, at least until the caffeine wore off and the drugs pulled him back under. Then he would sleep, most often upright in a carefully-arranged chair, as his body tried to knit his spine back together around the pins and rods the doctors had inserted to stabilize it.

Sometimes, Bruce thought he could feel those metal pieces scraping against his bones, foreign and cold and wrong. There were times when he had the urge to claw at the small of his back, to get rid of their invasive presence. He knew it was psychosomatic, that he'd be even less mobile than he was without the support the pins provided. That didn't stop the deep chill that sometimes swept up his spine, as if the pins were leeching all the heat from his body. Illogical or not, he wanted the metal gone. It wasn't a part of him; it didn't belong.

When the feeling became overwhelming, Bruce would stand in a scalding-hot shower for as long as his legs would support his weight. The water tugged at his still-healing surgery scars, but it was a fair trade. The heat from the water seeped into his muscles and bones, chasing away the unnatural chill. Being freshly clean didn't take away that feeling of wrongness entirely, but it did make it easier to ignore. Eventually, the doctors had promised, he'd get used to the presence of strange objects embedded in his back. At some point he'd even forget that they were there.

Bruce had his doubts. Every time he took a step, every time he sat down or stood up, every time he turned or rotated at the waist, it brought another reminder of what he'd lost. Some of it would come back, with time and therapy, but he would never be what he was before. He'd walk with a cane for the rest of his life, and even then it would always be a struggle. When the pain became too much, as he aged, it would become a wheelchair.

For Bruce Wayne, successful businessman by day and unapologetic playboy by night, it would be little more than an inconvenience. Not being able to stand up for long periods, or walk quickly from one room to another, wouldn't affect his ability to run his company, and the women who were only after him for his money in the first place would hardly be deterred by a wheelchair. Expense wasn't an obstacle when it came to obtaining medical treatment or supplies, or hiring extra help to compensate for his limited mobility. He should have considered himself lucky, in that regard. He already had a butler to fetch and carry for him, and a driver to cart him around. What would be a life-shattering disability to most people would barely make any real changes in the privileged existence of the so-called Prince of Gotham.

Bruce was thoroughly tired of people explaining this to him. He'd heard it from his doctors, who had been so excited to tell him that he wasn't completely paralyzed, as if that made the stark reality of his physical condition any less devastating. He'd heard it from the board at Wayne Enterprises, who had been thrilled that the "accident" hadn't left him incapable of being CEO, as if reassuring the stock-holders was his priority at the moment. He'd heard it from his physical therapist, who was just professional enough to disguise her distaste with his attitude behind gentle advice to make the best of things, as if he wasn't already pushing himself as hard as he could, in the hopes that the doctors were wrong about his expected level of recovery.

Luckily, a certain amount of self-centeredness was part of the patented Bruce Wayne image, so none of them were terribly surprised that he was taking it poorly. He was, after all, nothing but a spoiled billionaire who happened to have some decent business acumen to go along with his shockingly shallow personality. No one expected anything better from him, and some days that hurt even more than the debilitating pain in his back. He'd played the part too well for too long, and now he was living with the consequences. It had always seemed worth it, before, when it hadn't been all he was. He'd convinced himself that the mission was all that mattered; when Bane took that away from him, what was left?

Only Alfred understood. With Alfred, Bruce was allowed to be angry or frustrated or bitter, without anyone explaining why those feelings weren't valid or appropriate. Then again, Alfred was the only one who knew the truth of what Bruce had lost.

It had been Alfred who had found him that night, lying broken on the ground, helpless and defeated. It had been Alfred who had gotten him to safety, who had stripped him out of the armor and taken him to the hospital. It had been Alfred who crafted the cover story about a ski trip and an unfortunate fall, complete with reservations and plane tickets and all the paperwork any thorough journalist could ask for. It had been Alfred who made all the necessary calls and ensured the best possible treatment.

It had been Alfred who had sat outside his hospital room, stalling visitors and hospital staff alike, allowing Bruce the space to fall apart in private after the prognosis had been handed down. It had been Alfred who had helped him fill out all the necessary paperwork to arrange an interim CEO until he had recovered enough to go back to work. It had been Alfred who had pushed for the opportunity to take him home, as soon as his condition was stable enough to allow it. Once there, it was Alfred who steadfastly cleaned sweat-soaked bed sheets or vomit-covered blankets, who dispensed endless medication with tireless precision, who helped Bruce with such simple things as getting dressed and using the bathroom with calm, endless patience.

Alfred had picked Bruce up out of that gutter, where Bane had left him to die, and he'd been carrying him ever since.

/~*~/

On the third night since leaving the hospital, Bruce ate nearly half of his dinner and kept all of it down. To celebrate, and to prove to himself that he could stay awake for more than a few hours at a time, Bruce settled into his reading chair in the parlor rather than going straight to bed. He turned on the television and split his attention between the evening stock report and an old favorite novel, trying to distract himself from the pain and exhaustion.

At the top of the hour, just as Bruce was considering admitting defeat and going to bed, the program changed to the nightly news. He looked up as the anchor began to speak.

"—ongoing stories tonight, among them the disturbing trend in violent crimes throughout the city, which are continuing to rise fast in the wake of the Batman's disappearance. As the weeks continue with no confirmed sightings of Gotham's resident vigilante, some criminals are growing bolder. The Gotham City Police Department, long known to be undermanned and underfunded, is struggling to keep up. They have so far claimed no comment concerning the rumors that the Batman has been killed, as many among Gotham's criminal element are claiming. All they would say is that a body has not been found at this time. This leaves us asking the one question no one anticipated: Where has the Batman gone?"

Bruce didn't realize he was clenching his hands until he heard the spine of his book creaking in protest.

On the screen, the news anchor turned to face a different camera, one with a wider view that showed both her and her partner seated side-by-side. "It's now been more than a month since the Batman was last seen, Kevin," she said.

"It has," her partner said, turning to face his own solo camera. "And with tensions in the city rising, we go now to Marta at City Hall, where earlier today the Mayor convened an emergency council to address the growing—"

The television abruptly changed, cutting off the news anchor mid-sentence. Bruce glanced over to find Alfred standing nearby, holding the remote. When the feed came back, the speakers began to play soft, anonymous jazz.

Alfred's hand fell, solid and reassuring, on Bruce's shoulder. "Perhaps some music instead, Master Bruce?" he said, his voice casual and polite, as if the idea was nothing but a passing fancy.

"That will be fine," Bruce replied, forcing his clenched hands to relax. He met Alfred's steady gaze, and gave him a slow nod. "Thank you, Alfred."

"Of course, sir," Alfred said.

/~*~/

It may not have felt like it to Bruce, but the days did slowly get better. The physical therapy sessions became once a day, and then three days a week as his progress plateaued. His appetite returned as the pain medication tapered off, and his reflection in the mirror began to lose its pallid, sickly look. He no longer sweated intermittently through low-grade fevers. He reached the point where he was able to get in and out of the shower and use the bathroom by himself, most of the time. He began taking sporadic phone calls from the office, if he was feeling up to it, just to alleviate the increasing boredom.

The nights, on the other hand, got worse.

One of the benefits of being on constant pain medication was pervasive drowsiness and vivid, nonsensical dreams that were difficult to recall afterward. Once he began weaning off the drugs in earnest, Bruce found he couldn't sleep. The pain was almost impossible to ignore, lying motionless in the dark with nothing else to draw his focus. Then, when he did fall asleep, he had nightmares.

Bruce was no stranger to disturbing dreams. He'd been reliving the night his parents were murdered off and on for the last twenty years, remembering how it felt to be young and afraid, unable to protect the ones he loved. Becoming Batman had only changed the nightmares, not banished them; in later years, he sometimes fell asleep listening to the screams of those he'd been too late to save. Other nights it was the accusing eyes of the ones he'd never had a chance to save, the ones who had been dead bodies before he'd ever learned their names.

Now, his dreams were filled with Bane's mocking voice and the sound of his own spine snapping, caught in that terrifying moment when he'd hit the ground and known, immediately, that he was irrevocably broken. Sometimes the nightmares merged with the one from his childhood, and he was forced to lie helpless on the ground as his parents were gunned down in front of him. He knew that if he could only get up and fight he could save them, but the pain was too much, paralyzing him. He could only watch, over and over again.

It was from one such dream that Bruce woke, in the third week since coming home from the hospital, not much past two in the morning. As always, the first thing to hit him was the sharp, throbbing pain in his back. Eventually, he'd learn not to try to move right away, but so far his first instinct—especially in the wake of bad dreams—was to lash out, defensive. In his old life, that automatic reaction might have saved him from an enemy. Now all it did was hurt.

He forced himself to remain motionless as he regained control of the pain. Once it had retreated to the constant low-level hum he was learning to live with, Bruce pushed himself upright and carefully swung his legs off the side of the mattress. His plan was to waste a few minutes making slow, easy laps around the bedroom until his back wouldn't support his weight anymore. Hopefully the effort would tire him out and allow him to fall back asleep.

Bruce reached for the cane where it was propped next to the headboard, but he didn't use it to help him stand right away. Instead, he placed it across his pajama-clad knees, running his hands back and forth across the cold aluminum. It shone gently in the dark, reflecting the ambient moonlight that seeped through the gaps in the curtains. It was such a small, lightweight thing. He forgot that, sometimes. It always felt so heavy.

Suddenly Bruce's desire to get up and pace evaporated. He just sat there instead, eyes scanning through the shadowed contours of the familiar-but-strange room. Even after three weeks, it still felt wrong to sleep here, in the room he'd been so adamant to never occupy. Unfortunately, it was the only bedroom that didn't require going up a flight of stairs to reach, and not even Bruce was stubborn enough to put himself through an hour-long ordeal every morning and evening just to avoid this room.

Alfred called it the master suite, especially in his periodic attempts to convince Bruce to move into it, but to Bruce it would always be his parents' room. In the direct aftermath of their deaths, Bruce hadn't so much as set foot inside it for a long time. It was six months before he felt brave enough to walk past the doorway and glance inside, and another year after that before he buckled down and forced himself to begin sorting through their belongings. All of it went to charity, including his mother's jewelry, save for a few things here and there that Bruce kept for sentiment's sake: a cuff link, a framed photo, a little bottle of perfume. These things ended up in two cardboard boxes, one labeled 'Dad' and one labeled 'Mom,' both in Bruce's neat but still clumsy child's handwriting. He had flatly refused to let anyone move the furniture, or rearrange the room in any way. There were a dozen other bedrooms in the Manor; it wouldn't hurt anything to let this one simply be.

Nearly twenty years later, those two boxes still sat in the far corner of the room, nestled between the window and the closet door. There was no dust, of course—it was one of the rooms in Alfred's weekly cleaning rotation—but somehow the room still felt abandoned. Even with Bruce's wristwatch and cell phone adorning the dresser, and his slippers resting on the floor next to the nightstand, it felt hollow. Maybe it had been a disservice to his parents to turn their room into a mausoleum. Maybe they would have been happy that he had finally found the courage to stay here, if not for the circumstances that had forced him into it.

Bruce checked the clock one more time, considered his chances of falling back asleep, and made a decision. It took him the better part of an hour, but he managed to move the two cardboard boxes over to the bed. Luckily they were small, lightweight and easily carried, but even so the physical exertion drained him. It was a stark reminder of how much he had lost, when moving less than twenty pounds across a room was a serious challenge.

Once he had recovered, Bruce turned on the bedside lamp and opened up the boxes. The sight that greeted him brought back a flood of memories, along with a soft, almost welcome, pang of grief.

Reverently, Bruce began to pull things out, one at a time.

Alfred found him like that a little while later, still far too early for either of them to be awake. By then, Bruce was surrounded on the bed by miscellaneous mementos. Some transported him immediately back to his childhood, like the little wooden jewelry box he had painted in art class and given to his mother. Each of the six faces was a different bright, garish color, and the lines between them meandered rather than strictly following the corners, but she had never cared that it was ugly. She had awarded it pride of place on her vanity anyway, calling it her Treasure Box.

Others he couldn't remember his reason for keeping, like one of his father's green patterned neckties. Had it been a gift from Bruce, a birthday or Father's Day present? Had Thomas Wayne worn it on some special occasion that nine-year-old Bruce wanted to commemorate? Was there something special about this particular tie, as opposed to the dozens of others that had been packed up and donated?

"Master Bruce?" Alfred said quietly, walking inside. For once, he wasn't impeccably dressed in one of his many identical work suits, but wearing a finely-made dressing robe over nightclothes.

Bruce held up the seemingly-ordinary green tie. "Do you know why I kept this?" he asked.

Alfred came closer, blinking. Then he smiled. "I believe that was one of your father's anniversary gifts, that year. He hated colorful ties, calling them gaudy. So of course your mother gave him one at every opportunity, just to watch him open it in polite company and pretend to like it."

Bruce looked down at the strip of green cloth in his hands. "I had forgotten she did that," he said quietly.

"I imagine there is much you've forgotten about them," Alfred said. He found an empty corner of the bed and sat down with his intrinsic elegance, turning to face Bruce. "So have I, I'm afraid, although I had the advantage of having known them longer than you did." He reached over and picked up a loose sheet of paper, an embossed invitation announcing the sixth annual Wayne Children's Benefit at the convention center downtown. The date was exactly one week before the night they had died. "It's the nature of life to move on, to forget things as time passes," he said, running one finger across the slightly raised text. "I'm quite sure they wouldn't be upset, if that's what's bothering you."

Bruce's lips twitched in half a smile. Alfred hadn't dispensed unsolicited emotional advice, let alone said that many words in a row without calling him 'sir,' since before Bruce had left for college. Apparently Bruce wasn't the only one feeling nostalgic, tonight.

"What prompted this, if you don't mind my asking?" Alfred nodded at the loose debris scattered all across the bed. "It's quite late for reminiscing. Or early, rather."

"Couldn't sleep," Bruce said, attempting to sound nonchalant. It wouldn't fool Alfred for a heartbeat, but there were appearances to uphold, even in private. "Thought maybe it was time I decided if there was anything worth keeping in here, once and for all."

"In that case," Alfred said, standing back up and heading toward the hall, "I'll go put on some coffee, and we'll see what we have, shall we?"

Bruce nodded absently, dismissing him. Once he had disappeared, Bruce leaned over slightly to remove the final item from his mother's box. It was a small book, no bigger than Bruce's hand and perhaps an inch thick. The cover was heavy brown leather, faded and worn smooth with age. The pages were yellowing and onion-skin thin against his finger as he thumbed across one corner. At first he thought it might have been an old family bible, the kind with a name inscribed in small gold lettering on the front.

Intrigued, Bruce turned the little book toward the lamp and brought it closer to his eyes. Written across the cover in calligraphy-style letters was _The Book of Fae_ , and in smaller, plainer script underneath, _A Practical Guide._

Bruce frowned. His first thought—that it must be a book of children's stories—was disproven simply by flipping quickly through a few pages. The text was small and tightly packed, with no pictures to be found. He read a sentence here and there at random and found the language mildly outdated, like the classic literature he'd read in school. Even accounting for the semi-formal tone, though, the words weren't meant for children. It read more like a scientific text than a storybook.

Curious, Bruce flipped back to the introduction and began to read it, but he didn't get very far. When Alfred returned a few minutes later with fresh coffee, Bruce held up the little book to give him a good view, asking, "Do you know what this is?"

Alfred glanced at it while putting the coffee tray on the dresser. "I don't believe I've ever seen that particular book before, sir," he said.

Bruce thoughtfully rubbed one palm across the soft leather cover. "It was in the box with my mother's things," he said. "You don't know where it came from?"

"I'm afraid not," Alfred said, handing over a steaming mug.

Bruce shrugged and set the book aside on the nightstand.

It lay there, forgotten, for more than a week.

/~*~/

The next time that Bruce lost his battle with sleep, he followed through with his original plan to get up and walk around. He managed two slow circlets around the room, and even one trip down the hall to the sitting room and back. When he returned to bed, exhausted and sore, he fell asleep almost immediately.

It backfired when he was in more pain than normal during the following day's physical therapy session, which frustrated his therapist and subsequently put Bruce in a sour mood. He admitted to his nighttime wanderings, and got a firm order to stay in bed regardless of any insomnia. Before leaving, she—rather snidely, Bruce felt—suggested he request a prescription for a sleep aid at his next checkup, if he continued to have trouble.

Three days later, Bruce once again found himself awake in the small hours of the morning, with Bane's deep laughter still echoing through his skull. He flipped on the bedside lamp without sitting up, trying to dampen the flood of adrenaline in his system. That's when his eye fell on the strange little book, still sitting innocuously on the nightstand.

When Alfred came to fetch him for breakfast the next morning, he found Bruce already sitting up, book in hand.

"Are you sure you've never seen this before?" Bruce asked, setting it aside as he got to his feet.

"Quite sure, sir," Alfred said. He reached out to steady Bruce as he undressed for his morning shower. "What is it?"

Bruce handed over his pajamas and accepted the cane in return. "Just some old stories," he said. He turned toward the bathroom, hesitating. "Faerie stories, actually," he added.

"Ah, yes," Alfred said with a fond smile as he leaned over to turn on the water, placing one hand in the stream to check the temperature. "Your mother was fond of those."

This, Bruce did remember. Martha Wayne had tucked him in every night with a bedtime story, at least until he was six years old and decided he was too grown-up for such things. She had begun every story with the same words, a sort of ritualistic scene-setting: _The world all around us is not the only world there is. Behind the world we can see, there is another that we cannot see, hidden and secret. That is where the fae come from._

After that each tale would be different, one about a resourceful orphan who tricked mischievous elves into doing his chores, the next about a prince who went into hiding from his wicked uncle by trading places with a changeling. No matter where the stories ended up, though, they all started the same way. As a child, Bruce had memorized the words so that he could recite them with his mother, before the story proper began.

They were also the first words of the introduction to the strange little book. Bruce had recognized them, upon reading them for a second time.

"It had something to do with her grandmother, I believe," Alfred continued. Apparently satisfied with the water temperature, he stepped back and held the shower door open. "Or her great-grandmother, even. Perhaps your mother inherited that book; it certainly looks old enough."

"A hundred years, at least," Bruce agreed, stepping into the hot water.

Once he was clean, dressed, and fed according to Alfred's exacting standards, Bruce had an appointment with his primary doctor to discuss his long-term treatment plan. When that was done, he forced himself to swing briefly by Wayne Tower, just to put in an appearance and answer a few questions, reassure himself that the interim CEO was handling things properly.

He returned home that afternoon exhausted, hurting, and irritable, and once again the strange little book was completely forgotten.

/~*~/

Just after dark four days later, the police raided a warehouse by the water, looking to dismantle a drug smuggling ring. It was unclear what went wrong, whether someone in the GCPD had tipped off the gang or if it was just poorly executed on their part, but almost immediately upon their arrival the raid turned into a shootout. Within minutes, the entire block had become a veritable war zone.

By the time the news helicopters arrived to cover the story, the target warehouse had gone up in flames. At least a half-dozen cops were already dead, along with an unknown number of drug runners. Fire crews were frantically trying to contain the blaze, which was in danger of spreading out from the warehouse district and into the dockside slums, where the tightly-packed apartment buildings would become deathtraps.

Bruce caught only a few seconds of the special news bulletin before he was out of his chair and heading for the secret elevator. He made it only two steps before, in his hurry, the tip of the cane lost traction on the Manor's hardwood flooring. If he had just let himself fall, it might not have been so bad, but once again Bruce's combat instincts served him poorly. He twisted, trying to catch himself, and the resulting spike of pain temporarily blinded him. He screamed as he hit the floor, a long, loud yell of frustration and agony.

"Master Bruce!"

Alfred was crouched at his side a moment later, helping him sit up.

"I should be out there," Bruce hissed through clenched teeth, struggling to control his breathing and push back the pain.

Alfred's hands were steady on his shoulders, supporting him. "Haven't you done enough?" he asked quietly.

"People are dying," Bruce snapped.

There were tears in Alfred's eyes. "I know," he said.

Bruce looked away. "People are dying, Alfred," he repeated, softly this time. "People are dying and I can't save them."

"I know," Alfred said again. His hands tightened on Bruce's shoulders. "But you're not doing them any good on the floor."

Bruce turned to face him. "What can I do?" he asked. He didn't care that it made him sound childish to ask; a part of him would always think that Alfred had all the answers. "What good am I, like this?"

Alfred sighed. "Let's get you back to a chair, to start with," he said, sensible as ever. "Then tomorrow you can call the Mayor and offer to host a benefit for the families of the victims."

Bruce's mouth twisted in disdain. "Raising a little money won't solve anything."

"It will be your first public appearance since the accident," Alfred pointed out. "Why, you'll raise enough to send every single one of their children to college, and pay off their mortgages besides."

Bruce shook his head. "It's not enough," he said.

Alfred's smile was sad. "Nothing ever is, sir," he said.

/~*~/

It was later that night, as Bruce failed to fall asleep despite Alfred's prescribed soothing tea, that he thought of the book again. Reading it was a far cry from listening to one of his mother's old stories—the text was too dry for that, a pseudo-scientific discourse on faeries and their characteristics without any of the charm or whimsy that had made the tales themselves entertaining—but something about it was comforting, anyway. If nothing else, maybe it would be boring enough to lull him to sleep.

Bruce turned on the light and picked up the book from where it waited patiently on his nightstand. He flipped through it, trying to remember how far he'd gotten the week before, but in the end he simply returned to the introduction. He read the first few lines aloud, letting the words echo in his head, warm and familiar. He was five years old again, lying curled up in too many blankets, watching rain as it ran down the window as he listened to his mother's voice. _Behind the world we can see, there is another that we cannot see, hidden and secret. That is where the fae come from._

It was almost enough to make him smile. He was glad that he had opened those boxes, that he had given himself an opportunity to recall the good moments along with the bad. It was nice to know that his mother could still comfort him, twenty years after she had died.

He was about to put the book back down when his eye was caught by the final paragraph of the introduction. He had skimmed it earlier, but hadn't paid it much attention. It read: _Summoning a fae is a dangerous venture and should be attempted only as a final recourse, for though there is little that a fae cannot offer a mortal, the price of such a bargain can be high. If attempted, forcing a binding is advised to ensure the desired outcome._

Bruce lowered the book, shaking his head. The entire thing was written that way, as if it were nonfiction. There were pages of instructions on how to ward your kitchen to keep any fae from causing mischief inside, or rituals to invite them to bless your crops or purify a rancid well. There was a section about what to say to escape unscathed, if approached by a fae under open moonlight. Another dealt with the proper way to request sacred tears or blood for one of many described herbal remedies that required such things as ingredients. It was all absurd.

Still, Bruce flipped through the book until he located the section on summoning. The pages were filled with more warnings, each more dire than the last, and then a short set of instructions. Apparently, all he needed was a few basic tools and a considerable amount of willpower.

For just a moment, Bruce allowed himself to entertain the thought. Wouldn't it be nice, if he could summon a faerie and make a bargain to restore his spine? Even the harshest of the book's warnings wouldn't deter him. Bruce had already given up everything for the sake of his self-imposed mission; what price could possibly compare to the sacrifices he'd already made? He'd be careful—he'd use the binding that the book mentioned, whatever that was—and he'd word his request so that there could be no misunderstanding.

Bruce was halfway through memorizing the summoning ritual before he caught himself. What was he doing? Was he truly so desperate, that he'd believe in children's stories? He knew better. Gotham wasn't a city that encouraged faith or fanciful notions. Bruce might have had his illusions stripped away even earlier than most, but no one who grew up here could truly believe in miraculous second chances. Better to face the truth: Bruce would never wear the cape and cowl again. Nothing could change that.

He closed the book and put it back on the nightstand. He had a physical therapy appointment tomorrow afternoon, and he needed to sleep.

Convinced of his own logic, Bruce turned off the lamp and closed his eyes.

/~*~/

Two hours later, Bruce was still awake.

He sat up and turned the light back on. He read the instructions for the summoning again, and then found the complementary section on bindings, like it recommended. The instructions were short and straightforward; he memorized them easily.

The whole thing would take maybe half an hour. He could collect all the items he would need from various places around the Manor.

It would never work, of course. Bruce knew that. The only thing that would happen was that he'd feel like an idiot for believing in faerie tales. He'd lost so much of his dignity already; surely there was no need to just abandon the rest. He wasn't a child, to wish upon a star and expect results.

Then he thought about the fire that was likely still raging by the docks, and the people who might not have had a chance to get out. He thought about the cops who had been gunned down on the street, struggling to do a job they weren't equipped for. He thought about the drug runners themselves, most of whom were likely kids from low-income families who hadn't seen a future anywhere but in a gang, who had died trying to protect the profits of rich and powerful men who wouldn't lose a single moment of sleep over their sacrifice.

Bruce had failed them. He'd go on failing them, every day for the rest of his life. He'd be forced to watch as other people fought and bled and died for his city, unable to help them. Unable to save them.

If there was even a chance—no matter how slim, no matter how impossible—didn't he owe it to Gotham to take it? As long as he dismissed it as fantasy, there would be a tiny, nagging voice in the back of his head whispering that he'd given up. At least if he tried it, he could prove to himself that he'd done everything he could. When he finished the summoning ritual and nothing answered, he'd be able to finally move on, to lay the Batman to rest once and for all.

After all, he had nothing left to lose.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

The next morning, Bruce spent all of thirty seconds attempting to come up with a rational, reasonable excuse to give Alfred for collecting the various things he needed for the summoning ritual. He rapidly abandoned it for two reasons, the first of which was simply that he didn't think he could come up with something plausible that would explain everything. The second was that all previous attempts to fool Alfred, going all the way back to when Bruce was four years old and trying to sneak a second cookie, had been utterly futile. There was a reason he'd never even tried to hide his mission from Alfred, and it wasn't just because he needed Alfred's combat medic skills after a bad night. Bruce was fairly certain he'd never once lied to Alfred and gotten away with it.

Instead, Bruce wrote his list on a small slip of paper and handed it to Alfred as he came to clear away the breakfast dishes. "Can you gather these items for me, at some point today?" he asked, as casually as possible. "I'll need them by this evening."

Alfred glanced over the half-sheet of paper, and then turned to Bruce with a questioning look. "May I ask what it is you need these things _for_ , sir?" he asked mildly.

"Just a project I'm working on," Bruce said. "I don't expect anything to come of it."

Alfred stood there for a moment, looking at him. His expression didn't really change, but he got his point across just the same.

Bruce half-smiled. "Humor me?" he asked.

Alfred shook his head, and in a rare occurrence, actually smiled back. "Don't I always," he said dryly, and picked up the breakfast tray.

/~*~/

For the first time since Bane had taken the Batman out of commission, Bruce waited for the arrival of sunset with thinly-veiled impatience. The book hadn't specified a time of day to attempt the ritual, but something in Bruce was certain that twilight was the right moment. He was reasonably sure that was from his mother's stories, that idea that it was the transition from day to night, or night to day, when the barrier between the visible world and the hidden one was thinnest.

If he had to choose between dawn and twilight, he'd take twilight. It seemed more appropriate, somehow. After all, in the last two years—since he'd returned from his training and begun his mission in Gotham—dawn had meant an end to his work for the night. But twilight, that was a beginning. After dusk fell, he took off the mask called "Bruce Wayne" and became something more, something greater. Something worth being.

If Bruce was going to try to resurrect the Batman, it should be at twilight. If he had to bury the Batman forever, it should be at dawn. It was the vigil between where he'd wait for his miracle.

When the sun finally began to set, Bruce made his way to the side door in the kitchen. Alfred was waiting on him there, adding one final item from the fridge to a small duffel bag.

"Are you certain this is wise, sir?" Alfred asked, eyes focused on his hands as he zipped the bag closed.

"No," Bruce said. "But it's something I need to do."

Alfred hesitated for a moment, but he eventually nodded. "Your coat, Master Bruce," he said, and picked it up from where he'd laid it carefully across a nearby chair. He held it out.

Bruce stepped into it, transferring the cane from hand to hand as Alfred slipped his coat over his shoulders and subsequently smoothed at the collar. Before Bruce could step away, Alfred produced a scarf from somewhere and snaked it around Bruce's neck. He even tucked the ends briskly inside the coat. For just a moment, Bruce was a child again, being bundled up to go and play in the snow. It wasn't cold enough outside for snow, of course—it had been a mild, late-spring day earlier—but the temperature would drop quickly once the sun slipped below the horizon line. Gotham nights could be brutal, in more ways than one.

Finally satisfied that Bruce was properly attired for going outside, Alfred stepped back and handed over the bag. "Do be careful, sir," he said.

That was not a promise Bruce was prepared to make, and he wouldn't lie to Alfred. He chose to say nothing, simply tucking the bag under one arm.

"Very well, then," Alfred said, and opened the door. He waited until Bruce was already past him to add, quietly, "Call, if you need me."

Bruce nodded once, without turning around, and stepped out into the herb garden.

The rapidly-cooling air hit him immediately, making him grateful for his coat and scarf. The idea of spending hours outside through the coldest part of the night was not an appealing one. Usually if he was out at night he was wrapped up in several layers of reinforced armor and padding, and working up a sweat besides. Now, the chill crept through the fabric of his coat and shirt in slow, insidious tendrils. It latched onto the metal in his spine, making the surrounding bone and tissue ache more acutely than normal, especially considering that he'd endured a physical therapy session that afternoon.

The spot Alfred had prepared earlier was scarcely twenty steps from the door, but to Bruce it felt like miles. The tip of the cane caught oddly on the soft ground of the garden, and his steps were slower and more careful as a result. In the fading daylight, the vegetation laid traps for his feet. A single misplaced toe could cause him to lose his balance, and then there'd be no getting back upright without calling for Alfred's help.

Bruce had never spent much time in the gardens, even as a boy. He had vague, blurry memories of summer afternoons digging playfully in the rich soil, back when he was small enough to be carried on his mother's hip, but even those were few and far between. As far as he could remember, gardening hadn't been a particular interest of either Thomas or Martha Wayne, and so for the most part the flowers and bushes and herbs had been left in the capable hands of the groundskeeper, under Alfred's watchful eye. The result was a perfectly-sculpted, aesthetically-pleasing tangle of plant life that was, undoubtedly, beautiful—but clinically so. There had been no great labor of love here, and it showed.

Still, it was probably the closest thing to true nature that Bruce could reach in his current condition, so it would have to do.

Bruce found the river stones exactly where Alfred had told him they would be, resting on the smooth dirt where two of the winding paths crossed. There were twelve, each one approximately the size of Bruce's palm. Most were relatively flat, and all had smooth, rounded edges. Alfred had collected them from the bottom of the creek that crossed the southwest corner of the Manor grounds, per Bruce's instructions. They were arranged in a circle, like the numbers on the face of a massive clock six feet wide.

Bruce inspected the stones for a moment, trying to gauge their placement. The book had been adamant that the circle needed to be as close to true round as possible without measuring. Even a length of string held from a center-point was forbidden; the stones had to be placed by eye. Looking at Alfred's handiwork, Bruce almost suspected him of cheating. It was certainly better than Bruce could have managed, which was one of the reasons he'd asked Alfred to do it for him. The other, of course, was that his back wouldn't have allowed him to bend over that many times in quick succession.

Satisfied that the circle would be adequate, Bruce dropped the bag to the ground just outside the ring of stones. It took him a few minutes and one false start before he was able to find the least painful way to sit down at the inside edge of the circle, and even then he had to pause for a long while and just breathe. With his legs folded in front of him, he could lean forward just enough to take the worst strain off his spine, but it was far from comfortable. The ground was cold, still clinging to winter despite the spring sunshine that afternoon.

Bruce tossed the cane behind him—if this worked, he wouldn't need it again—and reached for the bag, eager to get started. He laid out all his tools first: a crystal bowl, pilfered from one of the Manor's parlors; a single white candle, unscented, three and a half inches in diameter and six inches tall; a small container of thick, heavy cream, chilled from the kitchen fridge; a jar of pure, fresh honey; and lastly, a deadly little knife no wider than a willow switch, with a wickedly sharp point.

The crystal bowl went on the ground in front of him, just on the near side of the circle's center. Bruce opened the cream and poured it into the bowl, careful not to spill a single drop. Once it was empty, the jug went back into the bag and he brought out the honey. He added that to the bowl as well, letting it drop languidly from the container until it formed a lump underneath the cream, gradually diffusing.

The candle he placed in the center of the circle, or as close to it as he could gauge by eye while seated inside it. A quick detour to his coat pocket produced a lighter, and he leaned just far enough forward to touch the flame to the wick, engendering a steady golden glow. It wasn't dark enough yet for the candle to actually cast any appreciable light, so it just sat there, flickering patiently.

Bruce sat back upright, thinking. He went over his tools methodically—bowl of cream and honey, candle, river stones delineating a circle. According to the book, this was all he really needed, besides a strong willpower and the correct spoken words. Around him, the last vestiges of sunlight were making themselves scarce. It was time.

The knife weighed almost nothing in his hand, and the tip was so sharp that Bruce couldn't even feel it as he pressed it to the pad of his finger. A drop of blood swelled up, and Bruce held his hand out over the bowl, upside down. The droplet clung for a moment, hesitant, until it lost its battle with gravity. It plopped lightly into the mixture, briefly creating a pale swirl of red against the white. A gentle ripple spiraled outward as the blood sank, and a moment later there was no sign that the bowl held anything other than cream and honey. Once Bruce cleaned his finger and the knife, and placed the knife in the bag out of sight, there was no evidence of the additional ingredient.

Bruce took several deep, even breaths, gathering his willpower. The twilight garden seemed to grow strangely quiet, as if it was holding its breath in anticipation. Staring intently into the flickering candle flame, Bruce began the summoning.

/~*~/

For what felt like a long time, nothing happened.

Then again, sitting alone in perfect silence in a cold, empty garden at night had a way of making the minutes drag, especially when every breath Bruce took aggravated the injury to his spine. He hadn't been comfortable from the start, and it only got worse the longer he stayed out here. The desire to fidget, to find some way of sitting that didn't cause his back to ache, was nearly overwhelming.

Bruce ignored it, forcing himself to sit still and stay alert. Discipline, in all its forms, had been a central tenant of his training. This wasn't that different from having to sit motionless for hours in a convenient shadow while waiting for a suspect to leave a bar, or forcing himself to ignore what should have been a debilitating injury and keep fighting long enough to get clear and call Alfred for assistance. It was amazing, what the body could be convinced to do with the right incentive and sufficient willpower. After all, determination—or stubbornness, according to Alfred—had always been Bruce's strongest character trait. This was difficult, but not any more so than many of the tasks his various teachers had demanded of him over the years, and markedly less so than a few.

So when Bruce caught his eyelids drooping in a sudden wave of drowsiness, he knew something was wrong. A normal person might have just assumed that the boredom had gotten to him, but Bruce knew better. He was too well-trained to drift off when he was, essentially, on watch.

Blinking rapidly, Bruce forced himself back to full alertness. The air around him felt thick and syrupy, and it was a struggle to make his eyes focus. His heart rate increased with a spike of adrenaline, and it cut through the fog that had crept over his thoughts. He blinked again, and the garden snapped back into reality with a tangible _shift_. The air was cool and crisp again, and he breathed it gratefully, trying to get his bearings.

Sitting across from him, just inside the circle of river-smooth stones, was a boy.

He was perhaps eight or nine years old, with perfect golden skin and glossy dark hair that reflected the ambient moonlight. He was seated cross-legged, either mimicking or mocking Bruce's posture. His chest was bare, showing the faint impressions of his ribcage and the sharp lines of his shoulders. So were his feet, letting his toes dig gleefully into the dirt of the garden path. Between, he wore pants of some soft, thin material that came down to his knees. Bruce couldn't place the color; one moment it seemed a simple green, and the next it was a sun-dappled field, with shades of gold and brown and even silver, borrowed from the starlight. His features were small and sharp, his mouth a deadly little blade, curved and eager. His eyes were dark, at first, until the boy tilted his head and the moonlight struck them. Then they were a bright, inhuman blue.

 _No_ , something in Bruce said immediately, recoiling. This was no boy, despite its shape. This creature was something else entirely, something older, something ancient and inscrutable. Something dangerous, if Bruce forgot for an instant what it really was. The book had been clear on that.

"Hi," the boy—the creature—said. It smiled, showing brilliant white teeth that almost glowed in the darkness. If the cold bothered it, under-dressed as it was, it didn't show it. It seemed perfectly at ease, calm and curious. It even let out a high-pitched giggle, albeit one unlike any other Bruce had ever heard. The sound echoed through the empty garden, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Every hair on Bruce's arms and neck stood immediately upright.

The creature's grin grew wider, as if it could somehow sense Bruce's discomfort. "Aren't you going to say hello?" it asked, in perfect English. If there was a discernible accent of any kind, Bruce couldn't place it.

"Good evening," Bruce said automatically. His voice came out even, in his polite-but-distant CEO tone, as if this thing was simply a minor stockholder he'd happened to encounter at the annual Christmas party. Thankfully, the social graces of the Bruce Wayne persona came so naturally to him that he could employ them on instinct alone, even when shocked. "Thank you for coming."

The creature rocked forward and back once, still grinning, child-like and eager. "Do you have a gift for me?"

Bruce hesitated. The book's instructions were clear, and he had no reason to doubt them—not now, not after the ritual had actually _worked,_ absurd as that was—but he still found himself unsure. This had gone from an academic exercise, a hypothetical scenario, to something frighteningly real. If even half of the book's warnings were as accurate as the summoning ritual apparently was, then a single misstep here could be catastrophic.

The most important thing, then, was to secure the binding. According to the book, it would protect him. Somewhat. _If_ he was strong enough to hold it.

"I wish to make a bargain," Bruce said. He leaned forward, keeping his eyes on the child-shaped thing in front of him, and picked up the bowl of cream and honey. "Will you accept this, as a gesture of goodwill, before we negotiate terms?"

The creature's eyes were fixed on the bowl, wide and hungry. "Is it a freely-given gift?" it asked. It licked its lips and leaned forward almost imperceptibly, transfixed.

"Yes," Bruce said. He held out the bowl with both hands, ignoring the spike of pain from his back as it was forced to carry the weight; between the half-inch thick crystal and the liquid inside, it was much heavier than it looked for its size.

When the bowl passed over the candle at the circle's center, the creature reached out eagerly and grabbed it. Despite its slender arms and child-size hands, it held it easily, with no apparent effort.

"Freely given and freely accepted," it said, its high child's voice at odds with its formal tone. "Let us bargain, and if no accord is struck between us, go our separate ways in peace."

"Agreed," Bruce said.

The word had barely passed his lips when the creature grinned again and lifted the bowl to its mouth. In moments, the entire contents of the bowl had disappeared. Bruce saw only a few flashes of red lips and white teeth, and then a raspberry tongue as the creature searched for every last drop, like a boy determined to clean out a mixing bowl of cake batter. It was almost disturbing in its intensity, more inhuman than anything the creature had done so far, excepting the hair-raising giggle.

Eventually, the creature lowered the bowl and rocked backwards. Its pale blue eyes were heavy-lidded and glazed, drifting in ecstasy. A slow smile spread across its child's face, and it hummed briefly in appreciation.

Bruce took advantage of the thing's distraction to lean forward and inspect the bowl. As he expected, it was as clean as it might have been if Alfred had meticulously hand-washed it. There was no sign of the cream and honey mixture, or of the drop of Bruce's blood that had been hidden inside.

Bruce took a slow, deep breath. This was the dangerous part, according to the book. He gathered his focus, narrowing it down until all his thoughts were of the creature sitting in front of him. He tried to convince himself that he could somehow feel that drop of blood that the thing had swallowed. Concentrating, Bruce did his best to put a tone of power and command into his voice.

"Shall we proceed with our bargain?" Bruce asked.

The creature froze, like a deer that has spotted a predator. It dropped the bowl to the ground, forgotten, and stared at Bruce with slightly narrowed eyes. "What did you do?"

Bruce refused to feel nervous. The book had several stories of bindings gone wrong, of what happened when one was attempted but not fully established, but he forced himself not to remember them now. Instead, he tightened his concentration and kept searching for the right tone of voice. According to the book, he'd know it when he found it.

"Bargain with me," Bruce said, attempting to make it an order.

The creature _shrieked_. It leapt to its feet, impossibly graceful, and peeled its lips back in a feral expression. "You laced my sweetcream with your mortal blood!"

Bruce felt sweat on his forehead, sour and cold. He gritted his teeth. "Calm down," he said, firm and even. "I summoned you to make a deal, nothing more."

The creature hissed, falling into a fighting crouch. "Liar! You said it was freely given. You tricked me!"

Bruce had been in too many fights not to know when an enemy was about to attack. He could see the creature's muscles coiling, like a snake about to strike. He didn't know how strong those small hands were, or if those perfect white teeth were capable of ripping out his throat, but he had no intention of finding out.

When the thing lunged at him, Bruce put all his desperation and determination into a single, shouted word. " _Stop!_ "

The creature halted immediately, as if it had struck an invisible wall between them. It actually bounced back slightly, recoiling as if from the impact. It shrieked again, an inhuman cry of frustration and anger.

Bruce's hard-won combat instincts were clamoring for him to fight, but he knew that would be suicidal. He wasn't sure if he could have beaten this thing, unarmed as he was, even if he had been at full strength. As it was, in his current condition, there would be no contest. This thing could rip him to shreds, if he lost control of it even for a moment.

"You dare," the creature said, low and threatening. It began to pace back and forth, although it remained inside the boundary of the river stones. "You would dare to bind _me_ , mortal man? I am a creature of air and shadow!" It walked back and forth, back and forth, turning with fluid ease and brimming with restless energy. It reminded Bruce of nothing so much as a predator trapped in a too-small cage. "You cannot hold me. You haven't the strength."

Bruce felt his heart racing and took a moment to slow it down, determined to show only perfect control to this creature. "Free yourself, then," he said, nodding to the edge of the circle. "If you can."

The thing hissed at him again, less snake-like now and more like a cat that has been backed into a corner. It continued to pace, but it made no move to step over the river stones or to come any closer to Bruce than the circle required. Between them, steadily flickering, was the golden candle flame.

"Sit down," Bruce said. "And let's bargain."

The creature shook its head, still endlessly pacing. "Release me."

"No," Bruce said.

"Release me!"

"No." Bruce wasn't about to let go of his miracle without getting what he came for. "Sit down."

"I will not," the creature said. Even as it paced, turning after every few strides, it swiveled its head to keep a constant gaze on Bruce. "I am _wylt-faedn_ , free-born, and I will not be controlled by a human." There was a sneer on the final word. "You cannot understand the simplest piece of what I am. How could you _possibly_ hope to bind me?"

Bruce, growing sympathetically dizzy from watching the thing stalk back and forth in such a small space, interrupted with a short, sharp, " _Be still._ "

The creature stopped mid-pace and faced Bruce, motionless and yet somehow still giving off the impression of restless energy. It was nearly vibrating in place, as if it took a monumental effort for it to stand still. Its lips parted in an animal-like growl, but it made no noise. It just stared at him.

Bruce watched it, warily, but the creature didn't seem to be faking. As before, it had been compelled to obey him. Why now, and not when he had told it to sit down? Was it dependent solely on the tone of his voice, the level of authority he was able to imbue in his words? Or was it, as the book claimed, something more ephemeral, a result of focus and concentration? Either way, he needed to learn to replicate it on demand, and quickly. If this thing attacked him again, he needed to be ready to stop it.

Bruce narrowed his focus, trying to remember what it had felt like when the commands had worked. "Sit down," he said, the way he might when scolding an employee caught stealing from the company—impersonal, absolute, authoritative.

The creature did not move. "Release me," it said again. Strangely, the earlier arrogance had faded. It sounded almost plaintive now. "Before it is too late."

Bruce adjusted his tone, shifting from "angry boss" to something more like "confrontational cop," harsh and unyielding in the face of resistance, with a hefty dose of implied warning. "Sit down," he tried again.

"Please," the creature said. Now there was no doubt; it was upset, on the verge of afraid. "Let me go."

It was hard to hear those words spoken in a child's voice, or to look at the wide blue eyes of the thing in front of him, and not see a scared little boy. For the barest instant, Bruce hesitated. He had to remind himself again that, appearances aside, this thing wasn't human. The half-complete binding was all that was keeping the creature from attacking him. If Bruce released it, the first thing it would do was tear out his throat. Until the bargain was sealed, with safe passage secured, Bruce had no choice but to keep it under his control.

" _Sit down_ ," he said one more time, and he knew immediately that he had found the right tone—low, firm, intimate. It was the voice of a disappointed father or a favorite teacher, warm but stern. The words carried a gentle hum of undeniable power, one that was felt rather than heard, like the vibrations caused by loud music with the bass turned up too high.

The creature's knees folded immediately and it fell, landing in a sprawl that might generously be called a seated position. The moment it did, it let out a cry, half despair and half what sounded like pain.

"Thrice commanded, thrice obeyed," it said through a clenched jaw. "Your blood compels me, mortal man." It paused to gasp for breath, struggling to speak evenly. "I am yours. Name me."

Bruce waited for a moment, but nothing else seemed to be coming. "Name you?" he repeated.

"Yes," the creature said. It was trembling. Its small hands were tight fists, pressed into the dirt. "Quickly."

"I don't know your name," Bruce said. "Can you tell me?"

The creature looked at him, pain writ clearly across its face and deep inside its inhuman blue eyes. "I was free-born, unnamed, untamed. Now I am yours. Name me as you will."

Bruce felt a flash of absurd panic. He had never named anything in his life. He'd never had a reason to—no children, no pets, and his company had been inherited after it was already formed. Even his alter-ego had been ultimately named by the press, once the rumors started circulating in earnest. How exactly did one go about naming a supernatural creature?

"What sort of name would you like?" he asked, falling back—as always, when he was in doubt of what to do—on Alfred's ingrained politeness.

The trembling had become full-blown shaking, now. "You have started this," it said. There was a suppressed sob hidden in its voice, contained but still obviously present. "Finish it."

Bruce was many things, but he'd never been sadistic; the book hadn't mentioned anything about a binding causing pain. It made him uneasy, and not just because this thing had the appearance of a child. He needed the creature's help—hurting it had never been part of the plan. If he came up with a name, would that stop whatever was wrong with it?

What had it called itself, earlier? A creature of air and shadow?

Bruce's first thought, of course, was of a bat, but that didn't fit. For all that there was something dangerous and frightening about this thing, it was also brightness and curiosity, a wild giggle and a feral grin. Free-born, it had called itself, and untamed. Certainly no human name would do justice to such a creature as this.

"Please," it said. It had started to cry. Its tears shone faintly in the moonlight as they slipped across its angular cheeks. "It _hurts_."

Bruce leaned forward, looking down across the candle flame and into those inhumanly blue eyes. As far as inspiration went, it wasn't much, but it was the best he would get under the circumstances. The creature's eyes were pale blue, true, but now that Bruce looked closer he could see that they were also lightly speckled with darker hues—the effect commonly known as _robin's egg_.

"How about 'Robin,'" Bruce offered.

The creature shook its head, breathing now with difficulty. " _Name_ me," it hissed, anger mixed in with the pain.

Finally, Bruce understood. He took a moment to focus, to recall that perfect tone. " _Robin,_ " he said, as if the name itself were a command, and this time his voice positively sang with power. The whole garden thrummed with it, as if the night was leaning in close to listen, trembling with excitement.

The creature screamed. Its back arched once, in a massive convulsion, before it fell limply to the ground, breathing hard.

At the same moment, Bruce felt something _snap_ neatly into place in his chest.

/~*~/

It was several seconds later before Bruce was aware of his surroundings again. The first thing he noticed was dizziness, a sense that the world beneath him was spinning. A moment later, it occurred to him that it _was_ —the surface of the planet was of course rotating around its core, slow but steady, progressing endlessly from day to night and back again. He had just never been able to feel it, before.

Bruce reached out with one hand and laid his palm flat on the cool earth of the garden path, trying to orient himself. He opened his eyes—when had he closed them?—and blinked rapidly until the dark garden came into focus, lit only by the single candle and the ambient moonlight. The shifting shadows seemed somehow raw, as if the edges of reality had become too sharp, liable to make him bleed if he wasn't careful. At least the pain in his back had retreated for the moment, with so much else to draw his attention.

In front of him, still within the circle of river stones and exactly where the spasm had left it, was the creature. It was breathing hard, but no longer shaking or tense with pain. It seemed almost boneless, there in the dirt, eyes closed and small chest heaving.

Bruce tried to speak, found his mouth unbearably dry, and licked his lips. "Robin?" he asked, tentative.

The creature shivered once, even though there was no power in the name this time, but otherwise gave no indication that it had heard him.

Bruce frowned. "Robin," he tried again, still careful to avoid making it a command. "Are you all right?"

The creature hissed slightly, but there were no teeth in it. It was more a sullen sound than a threatening one. "What do you care?" it asked bitterly.

Bruce hesitated briefly. He wouldn't apologize—it would have rung false, because in truth he _didn't_ regret tricking it into swallowing a drop of his blood, not if it had saved his life—but the creature didn't have to know that. In any case, having the thing furious with him wouldn't make bargaining with it any easier, so he might as well try to mitigate the damage.

"I didn't know the binding would hurt you," he said eventually, which was true.

Robin finally opened its eyes and turned its head just enough to look at Bruce across the candle flame. "Then why do it?" it asked him, looking puzzled.

"There are … stories," Bruce said, not wanting to mention the book by name. "About what can happen to mortals who try to bargain with your kind, if they don't take measures to protect themselves."

The creature huffed once, a dismissive sound, and began to laboriously roll itself up into a seated position. It moved slowly, gingerly, as if its whole body was sore. "Only to the stupid ones," it said. It gave Bruce an appraising look, namesake eyes cool and distant. " _You_ are not a stupid one."

Bruce found himself oddly flattered. "I'm careful by nature," he said neutrally.

"Caution is admittedly not a part of mine," Robin said, wincing slightly as it rotated first one shoulder and then the other, like an athlete warming up. "Even so, to be summoned by a mortal with the foresight to prepare a hidden binding _and_ the temperament to enforce it …"

Bruce cocked his head slightly, considering. "Is that rare?" he asked.

"Knowledge of my kind is fading from this world," Robin said dispassionately. It finished stretching and sat cross-legged in front of Bruce, once more either mimicking or mocking his posture. "So much so that even those who do stumble upon it do not believe, not with the kind of conviction required to make a summoning or a binding work."

 _Conviction,_ Bruce thought. Was that what he had?

Robin tilted its head slightly, almost like the bird it was named for, giving Bruce an inquisitive look. "What is it?" it asked, openly curious. "What could be so important, that a man whose very nature is caution would forfeit his life on the chance that my power could grant it?"

Bruce opened his mouth to answer, but found that he had no words. The physicality of it was simple—his spine was broken, and he needed it healed—but now that he was faced with actually making the bargain, he wanted to be careful. Was it health he wanted? Or was an intact spine simply the _means_? It was power he was after: the power to help, the power to fight, the power to save his city.

"Is it one life for another?" Robin asked, leaning forward. For the first time since the binding fell on it, it smiled, suddenly eager. "Mortals are always trying to die for their loved ones. A sick wife, perhaps? A dying child?" It narrowed its eyes. "Or is it an aging parent you fear to lose too soon?"

Bruce shook his head. "No—"

"No, of course not," Robin said, interrupting him. "Love, terrible as it can be, is a hot emotion. There is no warmth in you." It tilted its head again, the other direction this time. "Your bargain is a cold one—logic, and … _fear._ " It smiled again, showing teeth. Those blue eyes flicked up and down, assessing. "You seek something for yourself."

Bruce nodded. He wasn't so self-deluded as to think that his mission was truly about Gotham rather than himself, no matter how many lives he saved. It was about finding a way to exert control over a world that had been wrenched out of his, in one awful moment when he was eight years old. He could, perhaps, be lauded for channeling that obsession into something with good intentions, but the mission itself was fueled by something darker than simple altruism.

"Now _here_ is a mystery," Robin said, rubbing its palms together in excitement. "What gain in binding me is worth the life of a selfish man?"

The book had warned against lying, at least directly, so Bruce said, "I've been injured. Badly." He swallowed, finding the words themselves difficult. "My spine was broken, and it will never heal completely."

Robin, watching him carefully with those speckled eyes, made a little _go on_ gesture with one hand.

"I need it fixed," Bruce said, speaking slowly to give himself time to pick his words with great care. "Healed, not just so that I'm functional, but so that my skills all return at the same level they were."

Robin waited, still watching him. When it became clear that Bruce was finished, it gave him a puzzled look. "Is that all?" it asked. "One trivial healing?"

Bruce's mouth had remained dry since the binding had snapped into place, but if it hadn't, it would have gone that way now. "It doesn't seem trivial to me," he said. "The best surgeons in the world couldn't heal my spine, not completely. Not so that I can be who—what—I was."

"The best surgeons in the world," Robin said, dark and gleeful, "are not _me_."

Bruce's heart began to pound, and he took a moment to calm it. Binding or no, he didn't think it was a good idea to show this thing any weaknesses. "Then you can do it?"

Robin sniffed and waved one dismissive hand at him. "It is already done."

Bruce went suddenly, instantly cold. The book had been clear—there was no bargaining with the fae without giving up something valuable in return. Even the most successful negotiations, by which he meant the ones in which there didn't seem to be any dead bodies afterward, still had a cost. Had Bruce unwittingly promised something to this creature, something he'd overlooked?

"How?" Bruce asked, phrasing his question delicately. "There has been no price paid."

Whatever goodwill Bruce had managed to earn over the last few moments abruptly vanished, the eager smile and curiosity fleeing from Robin's childlike face and leaving it once more cold, angry, and startlingly inhuman. "No _price_?" it demanded, its tone brisk and its words clipped. "Is my freedom not a cost worthy to be counted, mortal man?"

Twin threads of memory drifted across Bruce's consciousness, vivid and immediate. The first was Robin's voice, rife with arrogance, saying, "I am _wylt-faedn_ , free-born …" The second, from only a few minutes later, once the binding had descended but before Bruce had named him: "I was free-born, unnamed, untamed. Now I am yours."

Bruce blinked away the after-images, unnerved. He'd always had a good memory, and training had honed it to a razor's edge when he needed it, but this was something else entirely. He had almost been reliving those moments in time, a sort of reverse déjà vu. It was as if the entire sequence of events, from the moment Robin had appeared inside the circle until the binding had snapped into place in Bruce's chest, was seared into his memory, indelible and immersive. How had that happened? Was it something to do with the binding?

"This is supposed to be a negotiation," Bruce said, still stepping lightly and ensuring his voice was courteous and calm, with not an ounce of command. The last thing he needed was to make the creature even angrier by inadvertently making it obey him. "Your healing to restore my spine, in exchange for a price. I have a right to know what I'm sacrificing."

Robin was glaring at him, its small mouth pressed tightly together until its lips were barely visible, thin and dark against the golden sheen of its skin. "An exchange is made between equals," it spat at him. The high pitch of its child's voice didn't dampen the pure fury underneath the words in the slightest. "You didn't want to bargain. You laced my sweetcream with blood, and by so doing bound my powers to your own desires. You didn't want a partner. You wanted a _tool_." The thing hissed at him again, although the implied threat was still absent. Maybe it couldn't actively threaten him, not when bound. "And that is what you have made of me, mortal man. An extension of your will, little better than a blunt instrument." It waved a hand, mockingly. "Enjoy it while you can."

Bruce hesitated again. He desperately wanted a chance to retreat, to barricade himself in his father's study—twenty years, and it was still his _father's_ study, to him—and spend time thinking over all the implications of what he was doing. This entire endeavor had been an impulse, a hopeless, helpless fantasy. He hadn't expected it to work, and so now he was unprepared to deal with it. He hated being unprepared, possibly because he handled it so poorly when it happened.

Bruce had lied when he said he was careful by nature; the fact was that he had _made_ himself that way, through trial and error. He knew he made his worst decisions when he was rushed, or caught by surprise. Many of his teachers had despaired of him, preaching of the value of intuition and adaptability. Bruce had only ever passed their tests through faking it, cheating at least in spirit by meticulously controlling the environment and anticipating all probable outcomes in advance. This situation couldn't be controlled, it _certainly_ couldn't be anticipated, and that put him at a serious disadvantage.

Unfortunately, he didn't have the luxury of time, or second guesses. For once, his intuition and adaptability were going to have to carry the day.

"Does that mean I could make it a command?" Bruce asked, trying to gather as much information as possible. "Tell you to heal my spine, and you would have to do it? Without taking anything from me in return?"

Robin's cold fury slipped just a fraction, diluted by what seemed to be genuine confusion. "The healing began the moment you completed the binding," it said. It sounded strangely hesitant, as if afraid Bruce was drawing it into a trap of some kind. "Three days, perhaps, and you will be as you were."

Bruce couldn't help it, then; he took a sharp breath, making a soft sound like someone had punched him squarely in the gut. Even in the midst of his miracle, he had hardly dared to hope. To have his mission given back to him so effortlessly, stated as a matter of fact and not couched in warnings or probability statistics, was an overwhelming thing. For a moment all he could do was sit there in the cold, dark garden and breathe, trying to find his balance in a world that had shifted underneath him without warning, for the second time in as many months.

When he had regained some semblance of control, Bruce returned his attention to the creature in front of him. "Is it desire-driven, then?" he asked. That strange reverse-déjà-vu effect kicked in again, this time of Robin's words from just a few moments ago: _… and by so doing bound my powers to your own desires_. He shook it off more quickly this time, and continued, "Somehow, the binding knew what I wanted from you, and gave it to me?"

Robin shook its head slowly, still puzzled. "So long as your blood compels me, my life and yours are bound together." It sounded mildly annoyed, like someone having to explain simple arithmetic to a banker. "As I heal, so will you. From now until your binding on me is broken, you share my strength, my resilience, and my immortality."

Bruce sat very still for a long moment, digesting this. It sounded like everything he had ever secretly wanted: not just improved healing for his injuries, getting him back in the field faster after a bad night, but an actual shift in his baselines. If he was stronger, he'd have to adapt his training routines to compensate; his blows would be harder, which could be a blessing in a fight with more powerful enemies— _like Bane, with his drug-induced enhancements_ , some part of Bruce's brain whispered enticingly—but he'd have to be even more careful than he already was not to lose control and go too far. Increased resilience would improve his ability to shrug off hits, maybe even the effects of drugs— _no more worrying about Ivy's manipulative poisons, or having to carry antidotes for fear toxin or the Joker's laughing gas_ —or allow him to train harder and longer without wearing himself down.

And immortality … What did that even mean? Eternal life? Eternal _youth_ , so that he would stay at the peak of his physical abilities forever? Immunity to weapons and other physical dangers, never again to fear that he was one well-aimed bullet or unlucky fall— _or broken spine, if Alfred hadn't gotten to me in time_ —from ending up unmasked in a Gotham morgue? He didn't think he'd want the immortality to be permanent—even if he was comfortable in his solitude, eternity was a long time to be alone—but in the short term it would certainly be an advantage over his enemies.

Bruce took one long, deep breath and held it. As he let it out, he forced his frantic, buzzing thoughts to calm down. Whatever gifts he had or had not been given, he would have time to understand them later. The one thing he knew for sure was that nothing was ever truly free, and especially not something that seemed far too good to be true. There was a catch, here, a hidden price to pay.

He went over Robin's words again in his head, searching for a truth buried between sentences. A moment later, he found it. _So long as your blood compels me, my life and yours are bound together._

"So long as my blood compels you," Bruce repeated, watching Robin carefully. "How long will this binding stay intact?"

Robin nodded slightly, seeming just a little bit proud of Bruce. "I knew you were not one of the stupid ones."

"How long?" Bruce asked.

"One year," it said. "At midnight on this day, one year from now, your hold on me will be broken."

Bruce sat back. "And what happens then?"

Slowly, Robin smiled, showing every one of its teeth. They glinted in the moonlight, small and sharp. "Then? Then I will be free," it said. "And a _river_ of your blood will not protect you from me."

A chill crept down Bruce's spine. He had been threatened before, by crime lords and villains much more physically intimidating than this child-like creature. Somehow, this one was harder to ignore. Perhaps it was because Robin didn't speak the words as a threat, precisely. It was a foregone conclusion, simply waiting for its due time.

 _One year_ , Bruce thought. One year, and the thing he'd summoned to help him would return to kill him instead. Was it long enough? Would he have enough time to save his city, to get it on the right course? He'd been back two years already, and while Gotham _was_ cleaner and less corrupt than it had once been—especially the GCPD, thanks to a mutually-beneficial information sharing campaign with Captain Gordon from Homicide—it was nowhere near the city Bruce knew it could be. Would one more year be enough to make a difference, to turn the corner once and for all?

Then again, did it matter? What were the next fifty years of his life worth, if he couldn't be the man his city needed? Either way, the binding was already in place. The insult, relatively unintentional as it had been, was already given. Releasing Robin now would only mean Bruce would die tonight, instead of next year. He was in too deep to back out now.

And one year, short as it was, was still one more year than he'd have had without the creature healing his spine.

"Very well," Bruce said quietly. "One year, then."

Robin blinked, for the first time that Bruce had seen. Obviously, whatever reaction it had been expecting to its calmly-stated threat, resignation and acceptance had surprised it.

Bruce reached out a hand, as if this had been a business deal rather than an occult ritual. "Is there anything else I should know?" he asked, not really expecting an answer; the creature had no reason to give him any more information than it had to.

Robin watched Bruce's hand warily, as if it might suddenly sprout a weapon. It did not seem to know what to do with it. Perhaps handshakes were a mortal invention.

"I suppose I'll see you in a year," Bruce said as he pulled his hand back into his lap. "Do I need to break the circle, to let you disappear?"

Robin blinked _again_ , looking more confused than ever. "Disappear?" it repeated.

Bruce waved his hands in a vague, mysterious gesture. "Or whatever it is you do," he said. "To go back where you came from."

"I can't leave," Robin said.

Bruce glanced around the circle. "Do I need to remove a stone, or blow out the candle?"

Robin stared at him for a moment. "I _can't_ leave," it repeated. "I am bound to you."

It was Bruce's turn to look surprised and confused. "What do you mean?"

Robin's blue eyes narrowed, as if it wasn't sure whether Bruce was playing with it for some reason. "I mean, I am bound to you, to do with as you will, for as long as the binding lasts." It shook its head slightly, as if in disbelief. "I am _yours_ , mortal man. Where else could I be but here?"

"You can't stay here," Bruce said immediately. "What would I do with you?"

Robin made another slight hissing noise, which Bruce interpreted as equivalent to a human sighing. "Whatever you wish," it said, petulant as any human child could ever be. "That is the point of binding me, after all."

"I can't just … _keep_ you," Bruce protested.

For one thing, how could he possibly explain it to Alfred? For another, it would be unsettling. How was he supposed to let this thing follow him around for an entire year, knowing all the while that when his time was up, it would kill him? It would be like being stalked by a personal grim reaper. And what would people _think?_ Billionaire playboys suddenly turning up with mysterious children from nowhere might not be unheard of, but it would be all over the gossip columns within a few days. There'd be no way to hide it, and it would get complicated in a hurry even without considering that the "boy" wasn't exactly human.

Robin just stared at him, unflinching. Either Bruce was getting better at decoding the creature's body language, or this message was simply too universal to be lost in translation: _You should have thought of that before you bound me_.

Bruce sighed. "Well, I suppose I can have Alfred make up a guest room, until we can figure something else out."

Robin continued to stare at him. "I am not your _guest_ , mortal man."

"Bruce," he replied.

"What?"

"My name," Bruce said. "You can't keep calling me 'mortal man,' not if you're going to stick around for a while." He stuck out his hand again. "Bruce Wayne." He resisted the automatic impulse to turn and look toward a flashing camera, biting back the pleasant-but-vacant smile that had been gracing the covers of magazines and web articles off and on since he was sixteen.

Robin transferred its gaze to Bruce's hand rather than his face, but kept staring.

"You shake it," Bruce offered. "Here, just—hold out your right hand, like mine."

Clearly dubious, Robin nevertheless complied.

Bruce grasped the creature's palm, surprised that it was smooth and alive under his fingers just like a human palm would be. He wasn't sure what he was expecting, but the sheer normalcy of warm skin hadn't been it. Then again, perhaps warm skin without the benefit of warm clothing—or, really, much clothing at all—on a cold night wasn't all that normal, after all. Robin's fingers were slender and tiny in his grasp, but he could feel the strength in them just the same.

"This is a handshake," Bruce said, gently pumping their hands up and down once, twice, and squeezing firmly before releasing. "It's how we introduce ourselves to each other."

"Bruce Wayne," Robin said slowly, as if trying the name on for size. "You are very strange."

Bruce smiled with one half of his mouth. "Welcome to Gotham," he said dryly.

/~*~/


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

It turned out that whatever Robin had done—or the binding had done, Bruce still wasn't clear on that—it was enough to banish all but the faintest traces of pain in his spine. He was able to stand up from the circle of river stones under his own power, feeling off-balance but in complete control of his body in a way he hadn't been in weeks. With only a cursory glance, Bruce turned his back on the cane where it lay in the dirt. Perhaps he'd send Alfred for it eventually. Perhaps he'd leave it there to be slowly buried.

"Come on," Bruce said, once he was sure he could walk without any help. "The door is this way."

Hesitantly, still caught between confusion and wariness, Robin slid smoothly up to its bare feet and darted across the pathway to Bruce's side. It gave the candle a wide berth, but seemed unconcerned about stepping across the barrier of the river stones. Had it ever really been trapped by them? Had Bruce been enforcing the circle, and now that he was outside it the creature could leave as well? Or was it simply that Bruce had given it an order, an implied _come here_ that it had to obey?

A spike of pain flashed through Bruce's skull, from one temple to the next. He briefly closed his eyes, not much more than an extended blink, and realized—now that his adrenaline was fading, finally—how exhausted he was. He'd been up most of last night with the book, first trying to talk himself out of trying the ritual and later memorizing all the rules and warnings. He'd been far too impatient and anxious to sleep during the day, and on top of everything else he'd had a physical therapy appointment that afternoon. Now it was approaching midnight, and despite the thousand questions burning inside him, Bruce knew he needed to take a step back, sleep for a few hours, and give himself some time to think.

In the meantime, though, there were a few answers he needed immediately.

"Do you have to obey every order I give you?" Bruce asked.

Robin glanced up at him—it seemed much smaller, standing next to Bruce's six-foot frame, than it had when sitting across from him in the circle—and pointedly did not say a word.

Bruce sighed. He should have known the thing wasn't going to be any more cooperative than it had to be, under the circumstances. "Answer me when I ask you a question," he said.

Robin smiled, showing its teeth.

Bruce felt another spike of pain in his head. They were nearly at the door, now, so Bruce stopped. He held out a hand to halt Robin as well, wanting to get a clear answer before he got Alfred tangled up in this mess.

Concentrating briefly, Bruce found the tone of voice that had stopped Robin in the middle of an attack, halted its pacing, and cemented the binding. The same voice that had given it a name. " _Answer me_ ," Bruce said, feeling the now-recognizable power thrumming through him.

Robin sucked in a quick breath, like someone who has unwittingly touched a hot stove. "The binding forces me to obey," it said rapidly. "But only when you deliberately invoke it."

Bruce watched it for a moment, considering. "It hurts you, doesn't it?" he asked. "When I use that voice on you?"

Robin turned its face away, and didn't answer.

 _It can't lie to me,_ Bruce thought. It was obvious that Bruce's command—his Command, perhaps, since it had to be deliberately done—had caused it pain, but Robin didn't want to admit it. Why? Was it a matter of pride? Or something darker, something instinctual and defensive?

Bruce felt something like bile creep up his throat at the thought. "Robin," he said. He hesitated for a second, and then knelt so that he could look it in the eye. "Look at me," he added, careful _not_ to make it a Command this time.

After a moment, it did. The speckled eyes were as inhuman as ever, but Bruce was becoming familiar enough with them to read them, at least a little. It was confused, still, and just as desperate for answers as Bruce himself was—but mostly, it was terrified. How could it not be, when it found itself at the mercy of a mortal's whims, one it knew nothing about?

"I don't want to hurt you," Bruce said, clear and even, so that there would be no doubt. "I will, if I have to, to protect myself or someone else. But I would never do it just because I could."

Robin stared at him for a long moment, something very dark flickering behind its stoic expression. "I have seen what happens to my kind, when we are bound to mortals," it whispered. Then its eyes widened, as if it hadn't meant to let that slip.

Suddenly, its actions—its threats, even—made a great deal more sense.

"Then let's try to avoid that," Bruce said, gentler than anything he'd said to it so far. "If I agree to give you rules and orders in a normal voice, one that won't hurt you, will you agree to follow them?"

Robin stared at him, hope and wariness competing in its eyes. "Why would you not want to hurt me, when you know that I will tear you limb from limb the second I am able?"

Bruce had to think about that for a little while, still kneeling down so that their eyes were on the same level. If he spent the entire year studying— _experimenting_ , perhaps, as vile as the thought was—could he find a weakness? A way to hurt it, or even kill it? Something that would save his life, on the day it came for him?

 _And what would be left to save, if I went that far? What good would I be to Gotham, then?_

"I don't hurt people who can't fight back," Bruce said at last.

Robin's eyebrows twitched upright. "People?" it asked, obviously surprised to be included in that category.

Bruce only waited, letting it stare at him. He wondered what it saw, when it looked into his eyes.

"I will … follow your orders," Robin said, slow and reluctant. "Even when the binding does not compel me."

"Thank you," Bruce said. He took a deep breath, and let it out in a rush. "I'm going to give you one more Command. Hopefully, it will be the last."

Robin glared at him, small body tensing all over. There was betrayal in its eyes.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, a little awkwardly, but he would not change his mind. Some things were simply too precious to risk. "I'm going to bring you inside now, and introduce you to someone." He found the voice he needed, and added, " _You will not hurt him_."

Robin shivered, squeezing its eyes closed as the Command settled into its bones. Bruce wondered—morbidly curious—what that felt like. Was it a surface-level stinging, like getting slapped? Or was it a deeper ache, in the muscles and tendons? Was it hot, flames that licked up and down nerve endings, leaving sympathetic burns in its wake? Or was it a cold sort of pain, merciless and sharp, like the spikes that lanced through Bruce when he moved his back wrong?

"Are you all right?" he asked after a moment.

"No," Robin said, sullen and subdued.

Bruce couldn't really blame it for that. "Very well," he said, somewhat helplessly. "Let's go inside."

/~*~/

Alfred was not happy.

An outside observer likely would not have been able to tell, but Bruce had long since learned the language of Alfred's subtly shifting expressions, the way he could radiate _pride_ or _disapproval_ or, sometimes, _sarcasm_ with nothing more than the barest tilt of an eyebrow or the turn of a lip. It was a necessary skill, in a house where nine times out of ten it was the unspoken words that were the most important. Bruce found himself wondering if Robin would learn, too, or if they'd have to get used to expressing themselves a little more clearly, for its benefit.

Bruce kept the explanation short, pleading exhaustion, but the truth was that there wasn't really anything more to say. He explained the summoning ritual, although he didn't mention the book itself. He wanted to keep that a secret from Robin, in case there was something between its covers that could alter the situation in his favor. Alfred knew about the book already, in any case; he gave Bruce a subtle nod to indicate he'd understood the missing piece.

Bruce _did_ mention the one year time limit, although not its bloody conclusion, and the distressing fact that Robin had nowhere else to go for the moment.

"Well, I'm glad to see you're feeling better, Master Bruce," Alfred said, when the explanations were as complete as they were going to be, tonight. "Welcome to Wayne Manor, Robin."

Robin had been staring hostilely at Alfred since the moment it walked through the doorway, and it didn't look like it was planning to stop any time soon. Was it resentment, perhaps, over being Commanded not to hurt him?

"Will you be requiring anything before bed, young sir?" Alfred asked it, using his professionalism like a weapon, cold and biting.

Robin glanced briefly at Bruce, looking for guidance.

"He's asking if you want any food, or something to drink," Bruce translated. "Tea, for me, please," he added in Alfred's direction.

Alfred waited, but Robin didn't say anything.

Bruce had a sudden thought. " _Do_ you eat?" he asked.

Robin shrugged, obviously trying for nonchalance, but the ever-present tension in its shoulders betrayed it. "A lack won't kill me, not with the binding to sustain me."

 _It's expecting me to starve it_ , Bruce realized, feeling vaguely ill again.

Alfred must have made the same connection, because for the first time, his face softened slightly. "Is there anything you can't eat?" he asked. "Any …" He trailed off uncertainly; apparently even Alfred's unflappable competence was challenged by the appearance of a supposedly mythical creature. "Allergies?" he offered, at an obvious loss.

Robin looked baffled.

When Alfred glanced at him, Bruce shrugged. Remembering the milk-and-honey concoction, and the way Robin had relished it, he said, "Something sweet, perhaps?"

Five minutes later, Bruce and Robin sat across from each other at one end of the dining room table, with a platter of cookies between them. Bruce sipped his tea, enjoying the warmth after so long sitting out in the cold, watching as Robin—first warily, and then with great enthusiasm—drank a mug of hot chocolate. The heat of the ceramic mug against its bare skin didn't seem to bother it any more than the cold night air had.

Only once its mug was emptied did Robin speak. "Where did the old one go?" it asked, craning its neck around to both sides, as if expecting Alfred to leap out of a dark corner and attack.

"His name is Alfred, and he went to get your room ready," Bruce said, trying to be patient. Like it or not, this thing was now his responsibility. A fatigue headache inadvertently caused by the faerie sitting in his dining room wasn't an excuse to shirk it. "If I'm not here, you're to listen to Alfred in my stead. Is that understood?"

Robin paused, its hand hovering in mid-air halfway to the cookie plate. "I'm to follow his orders as well?" it asked, dismayed.

"Alfred doesn't give orders, as a general rule," Bruce said. "When he does, it's usually for a very good reason. Even I listen, when that happens." Some impulse toward honesty made him add, "Most of the time."

Robin made that hiss-that-was-a-sigh sound, and snatched a cookie. It lifted it to its nose, sniffed deeply, and stared at it apprehensively. Slowly, it broke off a small piece from the edge and ate it. Its eyes widened, and the rest of the cookie vanished in three great bites.

Bruce slid the platter of cookies closer to Robin's chair. "Just don't eat so many that they make you sick," he warned.

Robin paused again, this time with one cookie in each hand, staring at them in open want. It seemed torn for a long moment, and then asked, in a quiet and small voice, "How many can I have?"

 _I'm going to have to be very careful with this,_ Bruce thought to himself. How long would it take for Robin to stop expecting some kind of punishment when it made a mistake? Would it ever lose that half-wild wariness, that instinct that Bruce wanted to hurt it and was only waiting for an plausible excuse?

The practical, logical, ruthless side of Bruce should have been glad. If this thing was afraid of him, maybe that could be used against it when his time ran out. It would be beyond dangerous to start thinking of it as a human being, let alone a _child_. How effectively could a creature such as this manipulate him, if he let himself pity it, or sympathize with it? How much damage could it do, even without considering that it was going to kill him one day?

Bruce tried repeating that to himself, to see if it would stick. _This thing is going to kill you one day_.

Robin had dropped its head, but it was still staring longingly at the cookies in either fist.

Bruce sighed. "You can have as many as you want," he said.

For the briefest instant, Robin grinned—not a threat this time, but a genuine expression of joy. The cookies began vanishing, one by one, so quickly that Bruce half-wondered if Robin was even swallowing them. Or _breathing_.

"We'll work out most of the rules as we go," Bruce said. "For now, just some basics."

Robin nodded absently, still focused on the cookies.

"Stay inside the Manor," Bruce said, tackling the most important issue first. "If for some reason we have visitors, stay away from them. No one can know that you're here."

"I will stay inside," Robin said. Its concentration was still on the cookie platter, but at least it was verifying that it had heard him and understood. "And avoid any guests."

Bruce tried to think of other things, other rules he should implement before Robin did something unfortunate, but he was exhausted and shell-shocked from the evening's revelations. When a massive yawn broke his concentration, he gave it up as a lost cause. If he was tired enough to be unable to suppress his body's impulses, it was long past time for him to go to bed.

"We'll talk more tomorrow," Bruce said, once the yawn had released him. "Alfred will be here in a minute to take you to your room. Stay there until morning." He placed his mostly-empty tea cup back on the saucer and scooted back his chair to stand. "Try to get some sleep," he added.

"But I don't sleep," Robin said.

Bruce paused in the midst of turning for the doorway. "What?"

Robin fidgeted in its chair. It hesitated, and then rapidly finished the cookie it had been eating, as if afraid Bruce might take it from it if it didn't. "I don't sleep," it repeated, once it had swallowed. "I can try, if that's what you want, but I can't—"

"No, that won't be necessary," Bruce said immediately. He thought for a moment. "I could loan you a book. Can you read?"

Robin shook its head.

Bruce blinked, trying to think through his headache and weariness. "How do you pass the time, overnight? When there's nothing you have to do?"

"Listen to the starsongs, and find their melodies," Robin said. "Dance with the winds between worlds. Swim, sometimes, if the fish are friendly."

Bruce wasted a valuable ten seconds trying to interpret that before he realized it was utterly futile, which just proved how much he needed to sleep. "Anything more … indoor?" he asked.

Robin fidgeted again. "I've never been inside a building, before."

Bruce's headache was getting worse by the moment. "Can you just stay in your room, for tonight?"

Robin nodded.

"Good," Bruce said. "I'll see you in the morning."

He left Robin there, alone but for the nearly-empty cookie platter, and retreated to the safety of his parents' bedroom. He meant to read his mother's book again, cover to cover this time, in case there was any information he'd missed or overlooked before. When he picked it up, though, his hands were shaking too badly for him to make out the small script. Another of his body's automatic responses that he couldn't seem to stop. Several of his teachers would have been appalled.

 _There is a fae creature in one of my guest rooms,_ Bruce thought, still trying to make those words make sense in that order. _It healed my spine. It doesn't seem able to lie to me. I can hurt it just by giving it a Command, and it's terrified that I will, simply for my own amusement. It seems to be fond of Alfred's cookies._

 _And it will kill me at midnight, one year from now._

Despite his exhaustion, it was a long time before Bruce fell asleep.

/~*~/

Bruce woke slowly the next morning, slipping into awareness like someone dipping gingerly into a too-hot bath, one toe at a time. He remained still, eyes closed, breathing deeply as he clung to an oddly peaceful feeling. For the first morning in a long time, it wasn't the pulsing pain in his spine that had jolted him from sleep. In fact, his back didn't hurt much at all; the ache was more like that of an overworked muscle, the kind of pain that promises new strength on the other side.

"Are you awake yet?" a high-pitched voice asked.

Bruce jolted upright before he could stop the impulse. He immediately winced, waiting for the explosion of pain from his spine. He knew better than to move that quickly. How long would it be before his combat instincts stopped being automatic? He was tired of sabotaging himself because he couldn't control his own … His thoughts trailed off, confused.

There was no pain. Or at least, no more than the quiet, hopeful ache he'd noticed first.

Bruce opened his eyes.

Sitting on the end of his bed, legs crossed and upper body leaning forward to inspect him, was Robin.

"Hi," it said.

Bruce jerked backward, sliding to the headboard to put some space between them. If there was any drowsiness left from his gentle return to consciousness, it was banished in a flood of adrenaline.

Robin tilted its head, curious. "Did I scare you?" it asked.

The creature looked both more and less real, somehow, in the early morning light that filtered through the curtains of his parents' bedroom. It was wearing what had to have been a set of Bruce's childhood pajamas, a shirt and pants that were at least a few sizes too large with sleeves and pant legs rolled up in an attempt to compensate. Its black hair was mussed, as if it had spent the entire night flopping around on a pillow.

"I asked you to stay in your room," Bruce said, once he'd calmed down enough to speak evenly.

Robin shrugged its narrow shoulders. "You said, 'Stay there until morning.'" It pointed toward the windows. "The sun is up."

Bruce's lips came together in a small frown. He made a note that all future orders and rules needed to be explicit, or else Robin would find a loophole. He should have anticipated that—the book had made a note of the need to phrase everything carefully. "In the future," he said, "I'd like you to stay in your room until Alfred or I come to get you."

Robin didn't look particularly happy about that, but it nodded. "Shall I go back there now?"

"Just long enough for me to take a shower and get dressed," Bruce said. "You should do the same. Alfred disapproves of coming to breakfast in pajamas."

"Okay," Robin said, still subdued. Then it tilted its head. "What is a shower? Like a rain shower, in a storm? Where should I take it?"

Bruce felt a sympathetic twinge in his temple, even though his headache from last night was mostly gone. "Come on," he said, standing up with a sigh. "I'll show you."

/~*~/

Between the impromptu lecture on mortal hygiene habits, the quick but thorough demonstration of the wonders of modern plumbing, and the unexpected detour of Robin touching and marveling over the various textures of fabrics to be found in Bruce's dresser (during an attempt to explain clothing and how it should be properly applied), it was more than an hour before Bruce sent Robin back to its room, leaving him in peace to complete his morning routine alone. Luckily, Robin's definition of "morning" seemed to be "the instant the sun shows any part of itself over the horizon line," so even with the delays, Bruce was still making his way to the kitchen around the same time he would normally be starting a work day.

He found Alfred there, expertly wielding pans and mixing bowls near the stove. A covered pan held what Bruce assumed were sausages, sizzling gently under an opaque lid; another contained the runny golden liquid of not-yet-scrambled eggs, or perhaps an omelet. Off the to the side, scattered artfully across a cutting board, was half a grapefruit, two quartered oranges, and several slices of mixed apples and bananas. On the counter next to the stove, Alfred was holding another bowl in the crock of one elbow as he briskly stirred the batter within.

"Pancakes?" Bruce guessed, from the aroma.

"In the absence of other data," Alfred said, his tone clear and pointed, "I'm operating on the 'something sweet' parameter from last night." He gestured curtly toward a nearby bowl, which held what appeared to be chocolate chips. "I think we've some powdered sugar in the pantry, as well."

Bruce fetched it, and then walked over to the counter to lean one hip against the marble. Even so small a movement sent a thrill of joy through him; twelve hours ago, doing that would have required a cane, not to mention a few moments to catch his breath from the inevitable pain.

"Has Robin come down yet?" Bruce asked quietly.

"I heard the shower come on, earlier," Alfred said. "But I haven't seen him."

"It, Alfred," Bruce admonished. "It's not a boy, no matter what it looks like."

Alfred did not look up from his steady stirring. For a moment, the rhythmic scraping of the wooden spoon against the sides of the bowl was deafening in the silence. "And what is 'it,' exactly?" he asked eventually.

"I don't know," Bruce said honestly. "But I'm walking without a cane, and my back barely hurts." He glanced toward the door, but there was still no sign of Robin. "The book was right, Alfred," he said, low and earnest. "I summoned something to heal me, and it did. I can be—" He stopped himself; he knew better than to say anything that could be outright incriminating in a court of law, no matter how careful he was with the Manor's security. "It gave me my life back," he said instead.

"For exactly one year," Alfred reminded Bruce. With deft fingers, he flipped a dial on the stove to a different heat setting and plucked a ladle from where it hung on a pin.

Bruce narrowed his eyes slightly. "You spoke with it, last night," he guessed flatly. "When you showed it to a room."

Alfred dropped a dollop of batter neatly in one corner of the flat skillet, followed by three more around it. "He—sorry, _it_ was quite eager to talk to me, as a matter of fact."

Now that Bruce was paying closer attention, it was painfully obvious that Alfred's calm was false, and extremely forced.

"It relished the opportunity to explain precisely what it's going to do to you, when your time runs out," Alfred continued.

Part of Bruce immediately wanted to ask him for the details, but he knew that wasn't the point. "I didn't know—"

"Of course not," Alfred interrupted him. "Even you aren't that reckless. Not intentionally, anyway."

Bruce swallowed the rest of his sentence. He couldn't remember the last time Alfred had spoken to him like this.

"I always knew that I would have to bury you someday," Alfred said. His eyes never left the four bubbling pancakes, as if they might reveal the truth of the universe if he studied them carefully enough. "From the moment you came home talking about your _mission_." The way he said the word made it sound like a curse. "I suppose I thought I'd come to terms with it, in a way; after all, it's never been my place to tell you what to do with your life. Not that you'd have listened to me if I had tried, not even when you were eight. Always so stubborn."

"Alfred—"

"Here I was thinking that you saw it as a calling, that you truly believed the mission was important enough to be worth your life," Alfred said, cutting him off again. " _That_ I might have accepted, eventually, no matter how much it would have hurt at the time."

He reached over to the bowl of chocolate chips, grabbed a handful, and sprinkled them evenly across the pancakes. Bruce couldn't do anything but watch, caught wrong-footed by the coldness in Alfred's voice. This was different than his professional veneer, the stiff armor of courtesy and deference that he adopted when it was necessary to put some distance between them. This was something harsh, something painful. He sounded almost … disappointed.

"But that isn't it at all, is it?" Alfred wiped his hand on a strategically-placed dishtowel and produced a spatula from somewhere, sliding the edge underneath one of the perfect circles of batter to check the consistency. "The mission isn't so important that it's worth your life; your life is so meaningless otherwise that you might as well throw it away." He pulled the spatula back, standing perfectly still and upright in front of the stove. "And that is something I can never accept."

Bruce opened his mouth to argue, unsurprised when nothing came out. He had no idea how to argue with Alfred, probably because he couldn't recall ever doing it before.

"I am not, nor have I ever tried to be, your father," Alfred said. His voice had dropped to something barely louder than a whisper. "But did you ever think for a _moment_ that I could have possibly cared for you any more, if I had been?"

Bruce was so shocked by this that it took him a moment to find his voice. "Never," he said.

Finally, Alfred turned away from the stove to meet Bruce's eyes. "Then how can you do this? How can you throw your life away over something so insignificant as a broken spine?"

"I don't—it's not _insignificant_ —"

Alfred turned back to the stove and began flipping the pancakes, one after the other, without splashing so much as a drop of batter. "You would rather die, young and bloody and for no good reason, than dare to live in this world like the rest of us." He sounded sad and resigned, which was somehow so much worse than angry. "Please tell me that I'm wrong."

Bruce was silent for a long moment.

"Is there a way out of it?" Alfred asked, very quietly.

"I don't know," Bruce said again. "I'll keep looking."

Alfred took a slow breath, looking down at his strong, weathered hands. "Can we kill it, before it has a chance to hurt you?"

Bruce thought back to the night before, to Robin's preternatural grace as it had stalked back and forth. He remembered the way it had lunged at him, almost too fast to see. "Not easily," he admitted. "Not if it saw me coming, for sure. And it said something about being immortal, anyway."

Alfred closed his eyes.

"I know what I'm doing, Alfred," Bruce said.

For a time, there was silence between them again.

Alfred began pulling the pancakes off the pan, sliding them briskly onto a tray. "I wonder if that's true," he said at last. The forced, fake calm was back. "You should go fetch him— _it_ ," he corrected. "Breakfast will be in a few minutes."

Bruce couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't make things worse. Instead, he turned around and left the kitchen. He was halfway up the staircase—taking a moment to be excited, despite everything else, that he could climb to the upper floors for the first time in weeks—when it occurred to him that Alfred hadn't called him "Master Bruce" or "sir" during the whole conversation, not even once.

/~*~/

Over the next three days, Bruce learned a great deal about Robin and the side effects of the binding, usually by accident. It wasn't that he didn't interrogate Robin extensively, taking notes on its answers to hundreds of questions and threatening to make it a Command any time Robin seemed unwilling to speak—but Bruce simply didn't have enough information to ask the right questions. Even under the constraints of perfect honesty, it was too easy for Robin to omit pertinent information, or make one answer sound like something else entirely because Bruce was making an incorrect assumption from the start.

In the end, Bruce trusted his direct observations more than anything Robin said. Since he didn't know what might end up being important, he kept track of everything he noticed. By the third day, he had a notebook almost completely filled with facts and suspicions, written using a cipher he'd picked up in his travels.

In the evenings, once he'd confined Robin to its room for the night, Bruce spent a few hours in his father's study reviewing his notes.

 _Has a sweet tooth._

That much had been obvious from the very beginning, and was only reinforced at every meal. Alfred had taken to baking almost constantly, refining his selections based on how quickly Robin devoured his latest offering. It seemed fond of chocolate, but would only eat something with cinnamon if there was nothing else available. It jumped eagerly at anything with a fruit flavor, from hard candies to pastries with fruit fillings. It continued to appreciate hot chocolate, gradually became obsessed with sodas—although Bruce wasn't convinced that wasn't fascination with the carbonation, which it didn't seem to have ever seen before—and drank almost an entire gallon of lemonade in one sitting. Alfred subsequently brought home a giant bag of lemon drops, and took to giving Robin one every time he saw it, as if he was trying to curry favor.

 _Is easily bored / Has a short attention span._

Bruce had only spent one hour trying to sit down in the study and have a conversation with Robin. If he made it an order, Robin _would_ sit, but inside of five minutes it would forget and stand back up to move around. Limiting it to a single room was like trying to contain a hurricane. Within thirty minutes of being confined to the study, Robin had picked up and discarded two-thirds of the books from the shelves, rearranged the paperweights and file holders on the desk, and climbed all over every available piece of furniture. Bruce rapidly learned that he would get better results if he indulged Robin's need for motion and new stimuli, so he began leading Robin on tours of the Manor. He was much more likely to get a complete response if Robin was distracted by exploring a new room or being allowed to swing upside down from a chandelier.

 _Doesn't actually know much about bindings._

Some, if not most, of Bruce's questions resulted in blank stares, shrugs, or answers so full of conditional statements and maybes that no real information could be gleaned from them. Robin didn't know how the binding was healing Bruce's spine, just that it was. Its timetable of "perhaps three days" could not be refined. It didn't know whether or not the presence of the rods and pins would create problems—although, interestingly, it asked specifically if they were made of iron. The book mentioned iron as a weakness of the fae, so Bruce had already discreetly begun looking into a way to procure an effective iron weapon, against the day he'd need it.

 _It's even less human than it first appeared._

/~*~/ _  
_

Bruce first noticed it on the second day. It would have been hard to miss, given how carefully he was observing Robin, even though the differences were minor. The day before, its glossy black hair had been slightly shaggy, wild in appearance; on the second day, it was calmer and perhaps an eighth of an inch shorter. Its blue speckled eyes had been lacking eyelashes—Bruce had made a note of it, in his book—but on the second day, they were there, slim and delicate. Its nose had changed shape slightly, lengthening and becoming more curved instead of the sharp angles it had been that first night.

"It's just my glamour adapting," Robin said, when Bruce mentioned the discrepancies.

Robin, at this particular moment, was sitting on the bed in its room, sifting through the bags Alfred had brought home that afternoon. It had been a while since Bruce had pulled a charity stunt for the press, so the timing was fortuitous; Alfred purchased a new wardrobe for every resident at one of Gotham's state-funded children's homes, and simply pulled out a few things of the correct size before making the donation on Bruce's behalf. The result was several sets of clothes for Robin to wear, with no one left wondering why a single, childless billionaire needed underwear, pants, shirts, and shoes sized for a prepubescent boy.

Robin had been delighted when Bruce explained what the bags contained, and had refused to wait until the next morning to go through them. Rather than subject it to a Command to leave them alone, Bruce had grudgingly stayed to explain the various items. It had seemed a natural time to bring up the changes he'd noticed in Robin's appearance.

"Your glamour?" Bruce repeated.

"A seeming," Robin said. It held up one of the sets of khaki pants, sniffed at the fabric, and violently sneezed. "Rather than a being."

"An illusion," Bruce translated from where he stood, leaning against the wall next to the door. "Not a literal, physical change; just the appearance of one."

Robin nodded absently, still focused on its new clothes. It tossed the khakis aside—all the way to the closet door, where they fell on top of a pile of previously-discarded items—and rummaged through the next bag.

"Can you show me?" Bruce asked.

"Yes," Robin said. It turned over the shirt in its hands, either baffled or intrigued by the striped pattern.

Bruce resisted the urge to roll his eyes; after two days of this, he knew better than to give it any wiggle room. "Show me, please," he said.

Robin dropped the shirt and sat up straighter on the bed. For a moment, it closed its eyes in concentration. The air around it seemed to ripple slightly, like the barely-visible waves over a highway on a summer afternoon.

Bruce blinked. Until that moment, Robin had been wearing yet another set of Bruce's old pajamas, ill-fitting and faded. Now it sat on the bed, impeccably dressed in the khakis and striped shirt it had just been handling.

A cursory glance at the floor by the closet confirmed that the actual khakis and shirt were still in the pile of discarded clothes. Robin had copied their images, somehow, without affecting the originals.

Bruce walked forward and brushed a finger against Robin's arm, at the elbow. The copied shirt was softer than he'd been expecting, but undeniably _there_ , and a palpably different texture than the pajama sleeve should have been. "Not just visual, then," he said, thinking out loud. "Hard to believe it's not real."

Robin shrugged again. "It's real to you," it pointed out.

"You called it a 'seeming,'" Bruce said. "You wouldn't make that distinction if you didn't understand the difference between something real, and something illusory."

Robin narrowed its eyes, getting that look on its face that Bruce had decided meant _mortals are incomprehensible and I will never understand them._ "You can change the seeming of a thing without changing the thing itself," it explained. "But that doesn't make the seeming not-real. Sometimes the seeming has more truth than the being ever could."

 _Doesn't understand the difference between subjective and objective truths,_ Bruce thought to himself. He'd add that to the notebook, next chance he got.

Robin closed its eyes, the air shimmered, and it was wearing the old pajamas again.

"You don't actually need those new clothes, do you?" Bruce asked. "You could make yourself look like you were wearing anything you wanted."

Robin looked up at him, grinned unrepentantly, and dove back into the bags.

"What do you actually look like?"

The question was out before Bruce realized he was going to ask it.

Robin paused, slender hands going still. It did not look up at him. "Why?"

"I …" Bruce trailed off. He didn't have a good answer, so he decided to tell the truth. "I'm curious. You've been wearing a glamour this whole time, haven't you?"

Robin nodded. "We have to, to set foot in the mortal world."

"Can I see you without it?"

"Not directly," Robin said. It hesitated a moment, and then added, "A reflection, perhaps."

It was the matter of a few moments to move into the bathroom next door. Bruce stood between the two sinks, facing the large mirror that covered the entire back wall. Robin was next to him, perched on the edge of the counter in a crouch and also facing the mirror.

"Are you ready?" it asked him.

Bruce nodded.

In the reflection of the mirror, Bruce watched Robin close its eyes. In his peripheral vision, he thought he could see the rippling-air effect, but there was no sign of it in the reflected image. One moment, Bruce was looking at the same Robin he'd seen for the last two days: a boy, golden-skinned and dark-haired, only obviously inhuman in the blue of its eyes, its sharp teeth, and the unnaturally graceful way it moved, too light on its feet.

A moment later, Bruce was looking at something else entirely. At its most basic level, the form was still human-shaped—two arms, two legs, hands and feet and eyes and mouth all where they should be—but no one could ever mistake this thing for a normal child, even for an instant. Its skin was pale green, the color of a stripped branch recently removed from a blooming tree. Its limbs were impossibly slender, almost skeletal; the lines of its shoulders and ribcage stood out in stark relief against the ropy muscles of its chest and arms.

Its fingernails were long, almost claw-like, and slate black; it also had only three fingers per hand, across from the thumb. Its ears were lightly pointed, and it had no hair at all on its head. Its eyes were still the same speckled blue, but rather than the color being confined to the iris, it dominated the entire eye. The pupils were thin slits, cat-like, and limned in silver and rainbow colors, like the surface of a soap bubble.

Bruce turned his head, looking directly at Robin instead of at its reflection. Without the medium of the mirror, it looked the same as it had before: a human child, with only a few disconcerting details to mark its otherworldly heritage. Although, interestingly, it was now wearing the same knee-length pants it had been wearing at the summoning, rather than Bruce's old pajamas. Bruce had the feeling Robin had never actually put them on, only borrowed the image of them. Glancing back into the mirror, Bruce thought he knew why; his old things were almost too large for the size Robin appeared to be, let alone the willowy-limbed creature in the mirror. If it had tried to actually wear them, they would have fallen off its sharp shoulders and narrow hips.

"Why does it only show in the mirror?" Bruce asked.

"Your eye sees the truth of me," Robin said. It hopped lightly down from the counter to the floor, and now all Bruce could see of its reflection was from its collarbone up. "Then your brain filters it into something it can accept; I can't change that." It pointed at the mirror. "A reflection is already a partial truth, slightly shifted. It's enough to fool you into accepting what you see."

 _I bet a camera lens would work, too,_ Bruce thought.

The air wavered around Robin one last time. Bruce blinked, and when his eyes reopened the Robin next to him and the Robin in the mirror matched once more—child-like, passably human, and wearing pajamas.

That night, once all the clothes had been packed into the dresser and Robin had been given the nightly order to stay in its room, Bruce flipped through his notebook and added another entry. This one read: _Can disguise itself as almost anything, or create extremely convincing illusions to fool multiple senses._

Underneath, in plain language rather than the cipher, he wrote: _This is potentially the most dangerous ability it has._

/~*~/

After supper on the third day—during which Bruce and Alfred learned that Robin did not like pecan-crusted chicken, despite the sweet flavor, but was completely enamored with honeyed pears—Bruce changed into sweats and a loose shirt and headed for the gym. With Robin's estimate of "three days" almost up, it was time to put himself through his paces and see if he was as healed as he felt.

It had been twelve hours since he had noticed any pain in his spine at all, even during his final physical therapy appointment that afternoon. In order to keep the therapist from noticing the sudden change, Bruce had been forced to fake discomfort he no longer felt. Alfred had already begun the process of fabricating a "specialist" that would take over Bruce's rehabilitation, to keep any real doctors from getting suspicious at his impossible recovery. Regular check-ups by his primary physician would still be a cause for concern, but they would wait to worry about that when it became an issue. Perhaps they could trust Leslie Thompkins with the truth, or at least a version of it. Or perhaps they could put off his next check-up until after his year was up, in which case it would hardly matter anymore what the autopsy said about the discrepancies in his spinal x-rays.

Most of Bruce's "real" gym equipment was down in the Cave's training area, leaving only those things it was acceptable for a normal CEO to have in his house visible to guests: a treadmill, a set of free-weights, a cushioned yoga mat, and—more recently—a set of parallel bars at waist height, to support him as he retrained himself to walk. It was a versatile space, and he used to do his morning runs here on the treadmill, but now it was packed with memories of pain, struggle, and failure.

If he'd had the choice, Bruce would have preferred to take the secret elevator down to the training room and put himself through one of his standard workouts. Unfortunately, even if his spine was healed completely, with no lingering pain or weakness, it had still been more than two months since he'd done anything physically strenuous. Bruce knew better than to throw his body straight back into his old routines. It would take time to rebuild his muscles and endurance.

That was a lesson he had learned the hard way. When he had first left Gotham, on his search for mentors who could craft him into the weapon his city needed him to be, he had thought himself in good shape. He'd been a naturally-gifted athlete in his early twenties who exercised daily; surely he had a step up on the average American, who jogged occasionally when the guilt kicked in from one too many hamburgers. His first teacher had disabused him of that notion inside of a week. It took more than six months of conditioning and strength-training before she had deemed him ready to learn even the basics of her discipline. By then, Bruce had known she was right, and he never fought one of his teachers over the pace of his training again.

In that vein, the first thing Bruce did was roll out the mat to cover the hardwood floor and begin a series of slow, careful stretches. He'd learned it more as a form of meditation than anything else, but it was useful for loosening tight, tired, or underworked muscles.

"What are you doing?" Robin asked.

Bruce opened his eyes. He was unsurprised to see that the creature had followed him; over the last three days, it had made a habit of shadowing him unless explicitly ordered otherwise. Bruce wasn't sure why, when it still seemed wary and afraid of him. He'd have thought it would try to avoid him, to limit the opportunities for Bruce to hurt it. Perhaps it simply preferred to know what Bruce was doing at all times, so that it couldn't be caught off guard later.

He was also unsurprised to find it balanced precariously atop one of the handrails of the treadmill, crouched and looking down at him. Whether by pure chance or some facet of the binding influencing him, Bruce had given it an apt name—like a bird, it preferred heights and could perch in all manner of improbable positions. Its favorite so far was the top of the kitchen cabinets, but it also delighted in sliding down the banisters in the stairway and traversing every room by leaping from one piece of furniture to the next, rather than walking. As long as it didn't break anything—and it was too light on its feet for that to be a serious risk—Bruce saw no need to discourage it.

"Stretching," Bruce answered. He closed his eyes again and shifted to the next position in sequence. He knew immediately that this had been the right call; his shoulders and thighs already ached from the now-unfamiliar strain. If he had leapt headfirst into a long run or lifting weights, he could have pulled a muscle that would have set back his recovery time even further.

"It looks boring," Robin said, obviously unimpressed.

"I find it peaceful," Bruce said. He could hear the plastic and metal of the treadmill rail squeaking in protest as Robin fidgeted or swayed back and forth. "Usually," he amended.

This was enough to keep it quiet for a little while, as Bruce focused on his stretches.

"What purpose does it serve?" Robin asked a few minutes later, interrupting him just as Bruce was beginning to find a rhythm.

Bruce sighed. "It helps me relax, so that I won't hurt myself when I train." With his eyes still closed, he pointed at the open door. "Either be quiet, or go find Alfred and help clean the dishes from dinner."

Robin hissed lightly, in disgust this time. There were no more interruptions.

Once his stretches were complete, Bruce managed half a mile on the treadmill at a brisk walk with no complaints from his spine. Encouraged, he completed the mile at a medium jog, and then increased the speed to a light sprint just to see how long he could maintain it. As expected, it was barely a tenth of a mile before he was breathing too heavily to keep it up, and had to return to a jog. When he hit the mile-and-a-half mark, he switched back to walking to cool down. It was a far cry from his usual three-mile morning run, but it wasn't a bad start considering what his body had been through lately, not just the broken spine but the surgery and the weight he'd lost in the aftermath.

It would take time—time Bruce could already feel counting down, as his year slowly ticked away—but he would regain everything he had lost.

 _Two weeks,_ Bruce promised himself as he wiped the sweat from his forehead with a towel and moved on to the free weights. He was already mapping out a steadily-intensifying training regimen in his head.

 _Two weeks, and the Batman will return._

 _/~*~/_


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

From the club level at the top of the Wayne building, all of nighttime Gotham was spread out below, a blanket of lights like blue and white stars. There was the occasional flash of red—a police car, ambulance, or fire truck speeding around a corner—but the sirens were much too far away to hear. In the darkness, this far above the streets, Gotham looked clean and pure. No visible pollution, no evidence of the ever-present poverty and crime. From here, it was easy to remember why Bruce had started his mission. From here, it didn't look so hopeless.

"It's a lovely view, isn't it?"

Bruce didn't turn from his vantage point at the skyscraper's floor-to-ceiling window, partially because he already knew who was standing behind him and partially because it would be something of a tricky maneuver while seated in a wheelchair. Instead, he just smiled, knowing it would show in his faint reflection in the glass. "My city is beautiful, from up here. Is that truth, or denial?"

"Denial," she said immediately. "That's why the rich and powerful like holding their parties up here. It lets them look down and pretend everything is fine, so they can go on living their lives without any pesky guilt." There was a short pause. "Which is problematic, since the whole point of tonight is to get them to give away their money. The guiltier they feel, the more zeroes they add."

"A tactical error," Bruce said dryly. "Clearly we should have held the benefit in Crime Alley, instead."

"I said guilty, not terrified," she said, mock-sternly. "Besides, the view might be worth it. It _is_ very pretty."

"It is," Bruce admitted. He finally turned, looking over one shoulder without moving the wheelchair. "As are you, of course. Good evening, Miss Kyle."

"Good evening, Mister Wayne," Selina replied. She walked closer and leaned down to drape an elegant arm over the back of Bruce's shoulders, in a sort of half-hug. She was lovely as ever tonight, hair artfully piled on top of her head with only a few tendrils draped just so about her face. The knot was held with what appeared to be ceramic sticks, but which Bruce strongly suspected were either weapons or lock-picks. Knowing Selina, they were probably both.

As she straightened, she handed off a glass of champagne—which, from the scent, was actually apple juice; she knew him too well—and sat lightly on the arm of his wheelchair, facing the massive pane of glass. It required her to arch one leg slightly to keep her balance, which just happened to show off quite of bit of smooth, perfect skin underneath the slit in her slinky gown. A glance down confirmed that her feet were barely covered by a couple of straps and laces that led down to a dangerously spiked heel.

There was nothing about Selina Kyle that wasn't a weapon, one way or another.

Bruce took a polite sip of his fake-champagne and used the motion to mask the movement of his lips as he said, quietly, "People are watching us, you know."

"They always are," she whispered. She tossed her head slightly and giggled as if he'd told a joke, covering her lips with her free hand as she let her champagne flute tip dangerously sideways. Bruce wasn't fooled for an instant, even if her drink was decidedly _not_ apple juice. Selina Kyle was the only person Bruce knew with more trust issues than himself; she would never let her guard down that far, not in public. Her alcohol tolerance was much higher than she pretended it was.

There was nothing for it now but to play along. Bruce Wayne had a reputation to uphold, after all. Without saying a word, he slipped one arm around Selina's hips and leaned toward her. She obliged him by tilting her head, as if he were whispering in her ear even though his lips weren't moving.

"So why are you sulking in the corner?" Selina asked. She giggled again, loud enough to be heard by the milling crowd behind them, but her words were soft enough that only Bruce would be able to make them out. "You're normally better at this sort of thing, especially when you're the one who organized it. That usually means you care about … whatever it is that we're raising money for, tonight."

 _Have you already forgotten the shootout at the warehouse, Selina?_ Bruce thought sadly. No matter how many times it happened, it still stung when he was reminded that her priorities were vastly different from his own. In some ways, they were remarkably alike, using high society Gotham as camouflage to protect their secrets, but that only made their discrepancies stand out in sharper relief. Selina wasn't one to care about the anonymous masses, not unless they happened to be the ones she identified with most strongly, the poor and desperate girls that she had placed under her protection.

"Where is your head tonight, Bruce?" Selina asked him, her tone light and teasing with just a hint of true concern underneath. "It's rare to see you so distracted. Or at least, it's rare to see you showing it so openly."

Bruce hummed noncommittally, absently trailing one hand up and down the exposed back of Selina's dress where the rest of the benefit guests could see it. Somewhere behind them, the soft click of a camera shutter could be heard above the tinkling piano music and the deep rumble of polite conversation.

"Well, I haven't been out of the house in a while, and it _is_ a nice view," he said.

"Yes, we've established that," she said. "Three times, now."

He smiled. "Of course, it's better, now," he added, pointedly taking a moment to glance at the cleavage less than a foot in front of his face.

Selina shrugged her shoulders, which did interesting things to her breasts, but she also flicked him on the thigh with one sharp blue-lacquered fingernail, where no one behind them could see. "Oh, Brucie, you say the sweetest things," she trilled. Under her breath, she added, "Don't try to play me. What's bothering you?"

"You mean, _besides_ the wheelchair?" Bruce asked, with a perfect hint of bitterness to the words.

Selina watched him carefully for a moment, seeming to weigh something. "And here I thought you'd given up trying to lie to me," she said at last.

"Even about important things?"

" _Especially_ about important things." She clicked her tongue at him disapprovingly. "You're doing a masterful job pretending, but you need that wheelchair about as much as I do."

Bruce shrugged. "You know, I couldn't walk either, if I was wearing those shoes."

"You don't have the calves for them, darling," Selina murmured, without missing a beat. Then her eyes narrowed. "All games aside, tell me what's going on."

She hid it well, but there was real hurt in her eyes. Bruce recalled suddenly that she had been the first person to visit him in the hospital, and the only one who had seemed genuinely concerned about him, rather than anxious about what it meant for his company or his charities. She must think that he had tricked her, that he had faked his entire injury—or, at the very least, made it out to be much more severe than it really was. She must think that he'd made a conscious decision to mislead her, to let her worry about him rather than trusting her with the truth. He wasn't sure which would upset her more: that he had lied to her, or that she hadn't been able to tell.

Of course, at the time, it hadn't been a lie.

When he didn't answer her, Selina took the opportunity to roll her eyes at him. "What are you afraid of?" She leaned over until her lips were brushing Bruce's ear, and dropped her voice to something that couldn't be heard even a few inches away. "If I had any interest in selling your secrets to the highest bidder, I already know the one that really matters."

Bruce moved his hand to the back of her neck, as if they were having an intimate moment. In a way, they were. "I know," he whispered. "I have nightmares about that."

She leaned back far enough to flutter her eyelashes at him. "Is _that_ why you never manage to get me arrested?" Her lips curled into a pout. "And here I thought it was because we were friends."

"I'm not very good at 'friends,'" Bruce said. "I never was."

Selina laughed again, although it sounded genuine this time. "Tell me something I don't already know," she said brightly. Then her face softened. "I _do_ care, Bruce. Whatever our … philosophical differences, I thought you knew that much, at least."

"I do," Bruce said, almost fondly. "I just forget, sometimes."

"So tell me," she said. "Maybe I can help with whatever it is."

"I doubt that," Bruce said, and it came out a little harsher than he'd intended. To soften the blow, he reached out and tucked one of the loose tendrils of hair behind her ear. "You don't want to be inside my head, Selina. It's not a pretty place, even on a good day."

She sighed. "Did you ever think it might be prettier, if you let someone else come in and tidy things up in there?"

Bruce chuckled once, and the sound came out bitter. "Ask me again in eleven months, why don't you?"

By then, he'd most likely be staring down his own death from just a couple of weeks away. If anything could get him to talk, that would be it. Imminent mortality had a way of making secrets seem pointless and absurd, even to someone like him. By then, it would hardly matter what Selina did or didn't know.

"Eleven months?" she asked. Her perfectly-trimmed eyebrows crept up toward her hairline. "What on earth is going on that it will take you a year to solve?" There was a pause, and she went very still, like a small animal trying to avoid the attention of a nearby predator. "Should I be preparing to leave town for a while?"

Bruce shook his head. "It's a … personal matter," he said. "I don't expect there to be any collateral damage. You should be fine."

"That's the problem with collateral damage," Selina said, her tone still wary and guarded. "You very rarely expect it. It tends to happen anyway."

Bruce just stared at her for a moment. Slowly, he raised his eyebrows.

She huffed out a little breath. "Okay, fine," she said. "Your expectations line up with reality a lot more often than anybody's have a right to. Control freak."

"I thought we had settled on 'prepared?'" Bruce asked calmly.

"No, it was 'paranoid,' actually," Selina corrected. The worry in her eyes was still there, but the touch of humor had done its job. "Although it comes in handy from time to time, I suppose." She sighed again. "All right, I won't panic unless you tell me I should."

Bruce nodded. "I'll give you a heads up, if it turns into a problem that might affect you," he promised, soft and solemn.

"And there's nothing I can do to help?"

Bruce's smile was sad, touching only one half of his mouth.

Selina watched him for a moment, without saying anything. With one hand, she traced a gentle path across his chest, as if smoothing imaginary wrinkles from his pressed shirt. "You're _sure_ you'd rather be alone tonight?"

"Please," Bruce said, inclining his head slightly.

Selina finally stood back up from her perch, pouting much more visibly now. "Fine, then," she said loudly, in a perfect imitation of someone on the verge of drunken tears. "You call me, though, if you change your mind!"

"Of course."

She gave him a little snort of annoyance and started to stalk off.

"Selina?" Bruce called, spinning the wheels such that his chair turned in a circle to face her.

She turned over her shoulder. "Yes?"

Bruce grinned at her in full playboy persona, almost a leer. "Don't I get a goodnight kiss?" he asked loudly, with the overly careful pronunciation of a well-practiced drunk. He used the champagne flute to block line of sight to the rest of the room, and clearly mouthed three words: _Give. It. Back._ When she didn't move, he added a fourth: _Now._

Selina smiled indulgently and came back over to him. She downed the rest of whatever was in her glass and set it casually aside on a convenient end table, before placing both hands on the unadorned plastic arms of Bruce's wheelchair. She took her time leaning over, giving him a long second to anticipate, before switching targets at the last moment and planting a soft kiss on his cheek rather than his lips. As she did so, she produced his wallet from somewhere unseen and slipped it back into his coat pocket. He didn't feel it, of course, any more than he'd felt her lift it in the first place. She was just that good.

"You're no fun at all," she whispered in his ear, before standing back upright.

"Good night, Miss Kyle," Bruce said firmly.

"Good night, Mister Wayne."

As she walked away, she deliberately put just a hint of sway in her hips. It wasn't enough to be provocative—no one else in the room would have noticed at all; it was only Bruce's attention to detail that marked the difference from her normal stride—but it sent a brief flare of regret through him just the same. In another lifetime, when his biggest secret had to do with the Cave and the suit waiting inside, they would already be pleasantly entwined in the back of his waiting limousine, with the privacy barrier raised so that he could pretend not to feel Alfred's disapproving stare. After all, it had been three months now since his "accident," and they rarely went that long between their evenings together, unless one or both of them was out of town or otherwise unavailable. It seemed wasteful not to at least enjoy each other's company here and there; it wasn't as if either of them could ever trust anyone else enough to have a real relationship.

Then again, if convenience was all it was, perhaps he could have risked bringing her back to the Manor, even with a dangerous, unpredictable creature haunting its corridors. The problem was, he _did_ love her. Not the way the tabloids liked to speculate, maybe, but she was important to him. She was perhaps the only person on the planet—besides Alfred, of course—who really knew him, rather than the personality he presented to the public. She cared for him, in her own way; she wouldn't keep his secrets if she didn't, let alone worry about him or visit him in the hospital.

He refused to repay that loyalty by putting her life in danger. He could only control Robin until his year was up, and he wouldn't take the chance that it would go after his friends as retribution, once it was finished with him. It would be better to limit the number of people Robin could associate with him. It would be safer all around. It was the right thing to do.

It still hurt, to watch Selina disappear through the doorway, leaving him alone in the midst of a swarm of people.

"I think I like her," a child's voice said, from right next to Bruce's chair. "She almost tricked you."

Bruce managed not to drop his carbonated apple juice, but it was a close thing. "What are you doing here?" he hissed under his breath, frantically glancing around to see who might have noticed the half-dressed boy at Bruce Wayne's elbow—for Robin was standing right there, bare-chested and bright-eyed, grinning that inhuman smile that was more about showing teeth than happiness. "Somebody's going to see you!"

Robin sniffed, unimpressed. "I worked my glamour to be not-seen."

Bruce blinked. "You're invisible?" He glanced around again, more slowly this time. Sure enough, nobody seemed to be paying Robin any attention. Some of the guests were looking in this direction, of course—someone was always watching Bruce Wayne, at these sorts of things—but there were no confused murmurs or shocked expressions. He glanced back at Robin, who remained stubbornly visible. "Then why can I see you?"

Robin shrugged. "The binding allows you to find me, or follow me if I try to hide or run away. If I wear a glamour of not-seen-ness—"

"Invisibility," Bruce corrected absently, still scanning the room.

"—then you will see through it. To your eye, it will be as if I am not wearing a glamour at all."

Bruce opened his mouth to ask another question, but abruptly realized that _he_ wasn't invisible, even if Robin was. He hadn't been playing up his drinking enough to start interrogating empty air, not without people noticing and coming over to check on him. Instead, he turned back to the window so that no one could see his lips moving, and snapped, "Follow me. Don't speak, touch anyone, or do _anything_ that might make someone notice you."

His voice wasn't quite powerful enough to be a full Command, but it contained the shadow of one. Robin immediately nodded once, standing very still. Its eyes had widened, but it showed no other emotion.

Bruce drank the rest of his fake champagne in one large gulp. He waited just long enough to be reasonable, and then began to make his way toward the bathrooms, which were in a side corridor back by the elevator. A number of people saw him coming and tried to initiate conversations, but Bruce waved them off with his well-known inebriated gregariousness, claiming loudly—more than once—that he'd had too much champagne, and joking that it was reacting with the strong pain medication everyone assumed he was still taking.

Robin moved at his side, an invisible shadow. The whole time, he kept one eye on the creature that no one else could see, but his worry was misplaced. Robin moved through the crowd with its typical liquid grace, dodging elbows and reaching hands with a bored expression on its face, never letting anyone close enough to be dangerous.

Not ten steps from the doorway, the mayor tried to corner Bruce for a "long overdue" conversation about campaign funding, seeing as how it was an election year. Bruce played along with the conversation for fifteen or twenty seconds before pantomiming a sudden, not-entirely-fake urge to vomit all over the man's expensive shoes. He made a great show of swallowing it back at the last moment, laughing, and then acting as if he was fully prepared to continue with the conversation. Instead, without hesitation, the mayor got behind the wheelchair and pushed Bruce the rest of the way to the bathrooms himself. He suggested making an appointment for sometime next week, and then he fled, leaving Bruce alone with a snickering Robin in front of the men's room.

"You _do_ have some mischief in you," Robin said, still giggling, with a mean glint in its eyes. "I wouldn't have guessed!"

"Inside," Bruce whispered harshly, nodding to the bathroom. "Now."

The moment the door closed behind Bruce, he did a quick sweep of the stalls to be sure they were unoccupied and then locked the main door behind him. He stood, leaving the wheelchair abandoned by the entrance, and turned to the main counter. Robin had immediately jumped up to perch between a pair of sinks, thin legs dangling off the marble counter-top and bare feet swinging slowly back and forth. It was watching Bruce carefully, but trying to seem uninterested. Its arms were crossed, a human gesture it had picked up sometime in the last week. In the mirror, its reflection was green-skinned and skeletal, lending credence to the idea that its glamour was down, at least to Bruce's eyes.

Bruce made an effort to control his voice, so that it came out calm and quiet enough that no one in the main room could hear. "What are you doing here?"

"I was bored," Robin answered immediately. There was a slight motion of its head, like it wanted to drop it, but it stopped itself at the last moment and maintained eye contact. "There's never anything to do."

"I gave you an order to stay inside the Manor," Bruce said.

"I have," Robin said. Where Bruce might have expected anger, he heard only resignation. "Even though you have not invoked the binding to compel me, I have obeyed. I have not seen the starlight or breathed fresh air since I came to you."

Bruce felt a tiny flash of misplaced guilt, and swiftly buried it. "What changed?" he asked instead. "Why did you choose to disobey me, tonight?"

"You left," it said quietly. This time, its head did drop. So did its arms. "You've never gone away, before."

Bruce opened his mouth, realized that he had nothing to say, and closed it again. On the counter, Robin was staring down as its hands in its lap. The slow kicking of its bare feet, which usually seemed carefree and childlike, now seemed oddly deflated. Its shoulders and back were rounded, giving it an uncomfortable-looking, drooping posture. In that moment it looked like nothing so much as a scolded puppy, all its trademark eagerness stamped out by disappointment.

Bruce rubbed at the bridge of his nose with two fingers and a thumb. "How did you get here?" he asked.

"You were … away," Robin said, haltingly. "Too far. The binding didn't like it."

Bruce dropped his hand from his face. "There's a proximity clause?" he asked, unable to keep his voice from rising slightly in volume.

Robin glanced up at him, tilting its head in the way that meant it was trying to make sense out of his strange, mortal words.

Bruce was rapidly becoming angry, even if he refused to show it. All his questions, and he'd never considered something like this. That book was _useless_ , at least when it came to the things that really mattered. "Is there a rule, or some kind of limitation, on the binding?" he asked, using simpler words this time. "One that says we have to stay within a certain distance of each other?"

Robin shook its head.

"Then what happened?"

"I don't know," Robin said, low and sullen. "The binding _pulled_ at me, so I came."

A built-in compulsion? Maybe that explained why Robin followed him around from room to room at the Manor, when he allowed it. Perhaps Robin hadn't been cognizant of it until the distance was great enough to make it more noticeable as a true compulsion, rather than a mild inclination to stay near him. Previously, Bruce had written the behavior off as natural curiosity, given its personality, but maybe it was more deliberate than that.

"But how did you get here?" Bruce asked. "We're miles from the Manor."

Robin shrugged. It was still subdued, but its ability to sit still and focus was reaching its limit. The swinging of its feet got a bit faster, and it started to flick its eyes around the bathroom, looking for something interesting. Bruce knew from experience that he had about thirty more seconds before he lost its attention entirely.

"Robin, this is important," Bruce said, putting just a hint of authority into his voice. It wouldn't be enough to force the creature's obedience—and, subsequently, wouldn't be strong enough to hurt it—but it would snap its eyes back to him. "How did you get across town and into this building?"

Robin shrugged again, but at least he answered this time. "The binding can always find you, and it was pulling at me." It held up one hand and made a pinching motion, using its thumb and middle finger. It held it over its chest and sharply twisted its wrist out, like it was plucking an invisible string. "I made my glamour to be not-seen, because you ordered me to avoid letting anyone notice me, and I followed the pulling."

"Did you walk?" Bruce asked. He imagined a map of the city, trying to figure the distance if Robin had followed a direct path, rather than the fastest route by car. "All the way downtown?"

"No," Robin said. Its gaze was starting to wander again, this time behind it to the porcelain and chrome sinks. "I was fighting the pull, because you wanted me to stay at the Manor. When I stopped, I was here."

Bruce wanted to pinch his nose again. Instead, he turned slightly and propped one hip on the counter-top next to Robin's perch. "You teleported?" he asked flatly.

Robin glanced at him, scrunching up its nose. "I don't know what that means," it said, frustrated. "I was there, and the binding was pulling me. I stopped fighting it, and I was here. Like when you summoned me in the garden."

 _It can instantaneously travel across town_ , Bruce thought. His fingers itched for his coded notebook. _Or at least, it can bring itself to where I am, if we_ _'_ _re separated._

"You act like I have done this before," Robin continued, its voice a low hiss. "I don't know how bindings are supposed to work! You are the first mortal who has ever put one on me!"

Bruce sighed once, defeated. "All right," he said, as conciliatory as he could manage. "I'm sorry the binding pulls on you, but from now on you're going to have to ignore it. You can't just appear wherever I happen to be."

"Why?" Robin asked. It was never more childlike than when it asked that question, which it did frequently. "Why does it matter, as long as I am … un-vision-al?"

"Invisible," Bruce corrected, for the second time.

"Invisible," Robin repeated dutifully. "No one can see me but you. Why _can_ _'_ _t_ I appear wherever you happen to be?"

Bruce snorted. "You're a distraction, and I have work to do."

"I won't be," Robin promised quickly. "I can be quiet and still. You won't notice me."

"And three minutes later?" Bruce asked. "When you've forgotten that you're supposed to be quiet, and you ask me a question in the middle of a board meeting? Or pick up everything in my office and rearrange it?"

"I won't!"

"Yes, you will," Bruce said flatly. "Short of a binding-enforced Command or a full platter of Alfred's lemon tarts, I've yet to see you sit still for more than ten minutes at a time."

Robin huffed at him, obviously sulking.

"Go back to the Manor," Bruce said. "I'll wrap things up here and follow you."

"No, don't make me go by myself—"

"I'll be half an hour behind you, at most," Bruce promised. "We can talk about this then."

Robin shifted in its seat, obviously uncomfortable. "The binding won't like it. We're not supposed to be that far apart."

"Robin—"

"Don't make me go away," it said, very quietly. "Please."

Bruce faltered. The only time he had ever heard Robin say that word, in the entirety of the two weeks it had been here, had been during the binding itself. At the time, it had been both terrified and in considerable, obvious pain.

Hesitantly, Bruce asked, "Does it hurt? When you say that the binding pulls on you, do you mean that it's actively painful?"

Robin dropped its head again and didn't answer.

"Robin," Bruce said. He wanted to sigh, but refrained. It might send the wrong message. "This is important. I need to know."

Slowly, Robin looked up at him.

"Does it hurt, when I'm too far away?" Bruce asked quietly. "Please tell me the truth."

Robin grimaced slightly, but it shook its head.

"I told you that I wouldn't hurt you," Bruce reminded it. "Not unless I was doing it to protect someone. I can't keep that promise if you lie to me, or refuse to answer my questions."

"It doesn't hurt," Robin said. The words came out slow and thick, like it regretted having to say them. "I don't like it," it added vehemently. "But it doesn't hurt."

Bruce felt the tension draining out of his shoulders; he hadn't known what he was going to do, if its answer had been "yes." He truly didn't want to hurt it, not unless it attacked him again, but he couldn't very well let it follow him everywhere, either.

"Why don't you like it?" Bruce asked, curious now. "Can you explain it to me?"

Robin shrugged again. "Maybe."

Bruce waited a moment before realizing the problem. "Tell me how it feels," he ordered.

"Wrong," Robin said. He shivered slightly. "Cold. Fake, or maybe bitter? A little bit scared, and a _lot_ sad." It wrinkled its nose in obvious disgust. "Annoyed. Angry. Amused, sometimes." It fidgeted on the counter, clearly tired of sitting still. "Mostly just alone, and wishing I wasn't."

Bruce felt a chill sweep through him. That was almost word-for-word how he would have described his own feelings tonight over the course of the fundraiser, culminating in a sense of abandonment when Selina had departed. Maybe that's what had pushed Robin over the edge—Bruce, self-inflicted or not, had been lonely and bored, and Robin had sensed it. It had appeared a moment later, ostensibly to either distract him or keep him company. What if that "pulling" it felt wasn't a product of the binding at all, but something Bruce was doing subconsciously?

That was more troubling than a built-in proximity compulsion would have been.

Bruce let out a long, slow sigh. At this rate, he'd understand what was going on with their binding maybe ten minutes before his year was up.

"Can you shift yourself back to the Manor?" he asked, rather than think about it any longer.

Robin shrugged, which was what Bruce had expected.

"Try, please," he said. "Do whatever you did to come here, but in reverse."

"But—"

"I'll be right behind you," Bruce promised. When it looked like Robin was about to argue anyway, he hastily added, "If I'm not home in an hour, you have my permission to come back, provided you're invisible and you don't make a scene when you do."

Robin narrowed its eyes at him. "Promise?" it asked.

"I promise," Bruce said. "Now go home."

"Don't be late," Robin said, with a hint of a growl to its words.

Bruce blinked once, and he was alone in the bathroom.

He leaned more heavily on the counter and placed his head in both his hands, just for a moment. Then he returned to his wheelchair, unlocked the door, and went back out to face his guests.

/~*~/

When Bruce returned to the Manor, forty-six minutes of his allotted hour had passed. He half expected to find the place in shambles, with Robin taking out its frustration with being forced to stay indoors by breaking decorations or scattering every book in the house across the floorboards. Instead, everything was still and quiet, perfectly normal. Maybe Bruce was projecting passive-aggressive tendencies onto a creature who simply didn't have them—it understood mischief, of course, but it didn't seem motivated by anything other than curiosity most of the time.

Bruce made his nightly trek up to Robin's room, shedding formal clothing items as he went. The suit jacket had been ditched in the parlor, left across a convenient chair back for Alfred to find. The length of the staircase was just enough to give him time to unwrap his silk tie and stuff it in his pocket. Traversing the hallway to Robin's door saw him removing his cuff-links; they disappeared into the other pocket. He had the urge to toe off his loafers and leave them stranded by Robin's door, but it wouldn't be prudent to offend Alfred's sensibilities _too_ much—they hadn't fought again, if that's what their discussion in the kitchen that morning had even been, but their relationship hadn't entirely recovered yet, either. Better not to push his luck.

"Robin?" Bruce called, pushing the door open.

"You're back," Robin said. It was sitting in the exact center of its bed, on top of the covers. As far as Bruce could tell, it had been simply staring at the door as it waited for him.

"Yes." Bruce hesitated, suddenly uncomfortable. What _did_ Robin usually do at night, if it couldn't sleep? He'd had vague intentions of getting it a television or something, but they had never coalesced into actions, partially because the idea of Robin watching late-night soap operas or infomercials was such a bizarre one. It had enough trouble understanding Bruce; how could it possibly follow a mortal sitcom or news program?

Robin nodded. "Are you going to sleep?"

"Yes," Bruce said, sill uncomfortable. "It's late."

"Okay." It didn't seem particularly disappointed. "Good night."

"Good night," Bruce echoed instinctively. He'd never said that to Robin before. Perhaps it had heard him say it to Selina?

He was halfway back to his parents' room before it occurred to him that he'd forgotten to give the order for Robin to stay put until morning. It was usually how he ended their conversations for the day, but the surprise _good night_ had thrown him. It was so clearly a departing phrase that he'd turned around and started walking away before he'd thought twice about it.

Bruce paused at the foot of the stairs. Was that why Robin had said it, trying to trick him into letting it out of its room?

 _I have not seen the starlight or breathed fresh air since I came to you,_ its voice whispered in the back of his head. It sounded somehow more accusatory in memory than it had the first time, in that bathroom.

Robin had a standing order not to leave the Manor—although it _had_ just broken it. Unless he was willing to go back up there and give it a full Command, it could leave its room at any time. So far, it hadn't, even though it had admitted to being bored. How long were the hours of the night, with nothing to do and nowhere to go? How claustrophobic was a single room, to a creature who had never been inside a building before two weeks ago?

"There is no way that this will end well," Bruce announced.

"Of that I have no doubt, sir," Alfred answered from the next room over. Dimly, Bruce could hear the soft flapping sound that meant Alfred was shaking out the wrinkles in Bruce's discarded suit jacket. A moment later, he appeared in the arched doorway. "May I ask what it is that will result in certain disaster?"

Bruce ran one palm along the smooth, polished wood of the staircase banister. "Did you finish all the checks on the suit?"

There was a pause. "I thought you weren't planning on going out until tomorrow night," Alfred said carefully.

"I wasn't," Bruce said. "Is it ready?"

"Yes, Master Bruce." Alfred folded the suit jacket over one arm with crisp, practiced motions. "I completed the last repair this afternoon. Although it could use a calibration or two, under the circumstances."

Bruce smiled. "Just a test drive, Alfred," he promised. "A quick loop around the city to stretch my legs."

"Very well, sir," Alfred said. He didn't tell him to be careful, or that he'd be monitoring the radio frequency in case of an emergency, or that he'd have a fresh cup of tea waiting when Bruce returned. He didn't have to. Instead, as he walked past, he paused briefly to touch one hand to Bruce's elbow. That was enough.

Bruce turned and climbed the stairs for the second time. When he reached Robin's room, he found the creature sitting right where he'd left it, in the center of its bed.

"I'm going to run an errand," Bruce said.

Robin shrugged, uninterested.

"Would you like to come with me?"

Robin perked upright, like a dog who has suddenly smelled fresh bacon. "Outside the Manor?" it clarified.

"Yes," Bruce said.

"Yes, I will come," Robin said immediately. It was on its feet and at Bruce's side in the space of half a heartbeat. "Where are we going?"

Bruce held out a hand, preventing Robin from running excitedly into the hallway. "First, you have to stay invisible at _all times._ "

Robin nodded impatiently, and with a single ripple of air its pajamas—new ones that Alfred had bought it, in the right size this time—disappeared, leaving behind the bare-chested, bare-footed creature that had first appeared in the garden. "Done," it said, a little smugly.

"No distracting me," Bruce added. "If you start talking too much or touching things, I reserve the right to send you home, using a full Command if necessary. Understood?"

"Yes," Robin said. It was literally bouncing on its toes. "Now where are we going?"

Bruce sighed. He had been right; he already regretted this. "Rule two is don't ask questions," he added.

Robin just grinned at him.

/~*~/

Stepping into the suit after so long away from it should have been a profound moment, like finally returning home from a long journey where, at times, it had seemed he'd never make it back at all. It should have felt comforting, sliding back into a second skin that he'd felt raw and exposed without. It should have been done deliberately, slowly, with a sense of respect for the magnitude of the moment.

Instead, Bruce pulled his armor and equipment on with quick, mechanical motions—still automatic, even after three months of skipped nights—and kept his focus entirely on Robin, who was flitting around the Cave with wide eyes and basically acting like a four-year-old who had been given too much sugar. Most of the Cave's contents didn't hold its attention very long, especially the computer or the lab analysis equipment, which it had no frame of reference for. It seemed briefly intrigued by the weapons locker, but moved on when it pulled the handle and it didn't open. For the most part, it bounded around the perimeter, climbing all over the workout equipment and work bench and storage containers.

"What—How does this—Is that—Can I—?"

It was almost comical, watching it start and then forcibly swallow a hundred rapid questions. It was trying so hard to follow Bruce's rules, probably wary of being ordered back upstairs without any explanations at all.

"This is the Cave," Bruce said, taking pity on it, just a little. "It's a secret, from everybody but Alfred, so you can't _ever_ talk about it."

Robin nodded absently. "Look! There are lots of bats!" It held up a palm in a friendly wave, giggling.

Bruce could hear the flapping sound of a hundred little leathery wings from the far recesses, if he made the effort, but there was a reason he never tried to install enough flood lighting to actually illuminate the entire space. "Yes," he said, reluctantly. He might have faced his childhood fear, but that didn't mean he liked them. "That's part of the reason we call it the Bat Cave. Robin, I need to be sure you understand that this is a _secret_ —"

But Robin's attention had already shifted to something else, the medical suite this time. Bruce sighed, finished hooking on his boots and gauntlets, and snatched the cowl to carry with him. "Be careful," he said, knowing it was useless even as the words came out. He walked quickly in that direction, not even noticing the gentle, familiar tug of his cape at his shoulders as he moved. "There's a lot of sensitive equipment over there—"

Robin twisted the top off a bottle and sniffed the contents, too quickly for Bruce to say anything. It sneezed violently, made a distrustful face, and dropped the bottle back on the shelf with a clatter.

Bruce got there just as Robin wandered off to its next destination, snatching the bottle before it fell off the table. Luckily, according to the label, it was just rubbing alcohol—used mostly for disinfecting equipment—and not something more dangerous. He twisted the cap back on and spent a precious half-second trying to figure out where it fit in Alfred's meticulous organization scheme, before just shoving it somewhere and hoping for the best.

"Robin, will you stand _still_ for a moment?" Bruce asked, turning around and trying to find it. "I need to make sure you understand how serious this is."

"It's a secret; I got it," Robin called out. Its voice was coming from over by the garage. "Besides, who would I tell? I have to stay invisible all the time."

Bruce paused for a moment. That made a startling amount of sense, actually. "Can people still hear you, when you're invisible?" he asked. He shook his head and walked quickly over to the garage section, near the secret exit. His fingers were itching for his notebook, again. "Or do you mask your voice as well as your—No, don't touch that!"

It was already too late: An ominous hissing noise preceded a cloud of faintly blue smoke that shot out from the undercarriage of the primary car. It was one of the defensive measures Bruce had installed, one that activated in the event someone touched one of the door handles while the radio frequency key embedded in each of the suit's gloves was more than eight inches away.

"Try not to breathe the gas," Bruce called out in warning. He followed his own advice and cupped a hand over his mouth, although he was still far enough away that by the time the smoke reached him it had diffused to a non-effective concentration. It wasn't really dangerous—he'd never take the chance some innocent civilian would get hurt in the field—but it would make his eyes water and his lungs burn for a good hour or so, and he didn't feel like postponing tonight's errand. "Robin? Are you all right?"

"It's sour," Robin said, sounding appalled. "What is it?"

"Tear gas," Bruce replied. His voice came out muffled slightly by his palm. "Or at least its distant cousin. Did you breathe any of it, or get it in your eyes?"

The cloud was rapidly vanishing, dispersing harmlessly into the air. That had been one of the stipulations, when Bruce had commissioned it from the Wayne Enterprises R&D department—he wanted to protect his car, not create a bio-hazard zone. As it dissipated, Robin was revealed, covering its face with one forearm but still visibly scowling. It turned its head, spat loudly, and shook out its entire body like a dog emerging from a lake.

"This is why you shouldn't touch things without asking," Bruce said, aiming for wise and responsible, but unable to keep the laughter out of his voice entirely.

Robin huffed. "I do not like that … thing."

"That thing is my car," Bruce said. The gas was completely gone, now, so he walked the rest of the way over to the driver's side door and palmed the handle. It opened with the friendly little gasp of a pressure-seal breaking, lighting up inside to welcome him back. "Get in," he added.

Robin was staring at the car, openly hostile. "It doesn't like me," it said, wary.

"It's programmed to attack anyone who isn't me, that's all," Bruce said. When Robin didn't look reassured, he sighed. "It likes you just fine."

"You promise?"

"I promise," Bruce said, as seriously as he could manage. "Now get in."

Robin didn't move.

"Do you want to come along, or not?"

With one quick jump, like it was trying to commit itself before it—or the car—changed its mind, Robin stepped up onto the driver's seat. It was small enough that it could easily crouch on the leather, arms wrapped around its knees as it peered anxiously at the control panel lights.

"Over there," Bruce said, pointing. "This is my seat."

As Robin scuttled across the center console, Bruce finally had his chance for the serious, deliberate moment of reclamation that he'd wanted. Before he stepped into the car, he took the time to be slow and careful as he put on the cowl for the first time in months. The white lenses flashed to life, briefly obscuring his vision. There was a short, almost silent buzz as the electronics calibrated, syncing with the wireless communicator built into the armored torso. It connected him both to Alfred, over the radio, and the top of the line computer in the center of the Cave.

Bruce took a deep breath, held it, and let it out. He felt his body language shifting, becoming more aggressive, more fluid. His mouth turned automatically into a severe line, showing no emotion. His thoughts and emotions quieted, leaving him calm, still, and focused.

He was Batman again.

"Are we leaving?" Robin demanded from the passenger seat. "What are you doing?"

Bruce leaned over to look into the car. "What did I say about questions?" he asked.

Robin recoiled, eyes wide. "I'm sorry," it whispered instantly.

It was only then that Bruce realized his voice had come out in that particular Batman snarl, which sounded annoyed or frustrated under the best circumstances, and slipped over into angry or threatening without much provocation. In fact, it wasn't that far off from the tone of voice that he used when he needed to give Robin a Command, just with some of the warmth stripped out. What he'd intended as a mild rebuke, almost teasing, had come out instead as a barked order.

"It's fine," Bruce said. It was still Batman-harsh, but it was the best he could do. "Just remember not to let anybody notice you."

Robin nodded, slowly relaxing when no further scolding or punishments seemed imminent.

Bruce briefly considered trying to explain the concept of seat-belts, gave it up as a futile endeavor—it wasn't like a car crash could kill Robin, and even if it did that would actually _solve_ more problems than it caused—and turned on the engine. The Batmobile thrummed to life around them, and they departed.

/~*~/

There was something oddly peaceful about watching Robin watch the stars.

The roof of the apartment building wasn't high enough to get them above all of the smog and pollution, but it was a relatively clear night regardless. The soft glow of downtown Gotham on the horizon—still ablaze, even though it was after midnight—blotted out the fainter stars, but Bruce could still tip his head back and make out one or two familiar shapes. It wasn't something he normally took the time to do, when out on patrol, but tonight wasn't a normal night in more ways than one.

When Bruce had parked the car in a shadowy alley nearby, he'd expected to have to keep a tight rein on Robin at all times, fearing that it would run off and inevitably cause some kind of catastrophe. Instead, the moment that he chivvied it up to the rooftop—Bruce used his near-silent grapple, while Robin simply climbed up the brick-and-mortar walls like a spider—Robin was struck both speechless and motionless.

It was still standing there, nearly twenty minutes later, with no indications that it wanted to move anytime soon. It had its head tilted what looked to be painfully far backward, arms stretched out wide. From time to time it would spin in a circle, or laugh at something Bruce couldn't perceive, but mostly it just stood there on the concrete lip that was meant to keep anyone from falling off the roof, eyes upwards and body perfectly poised.

It was almost eerie, after witnessing its manic energy in the Cave just a half hour earlier.

From the roof access door—which was little more than a tiny outcropping above the stairwell, built back to back with the maintenance access for the heating and cooling systems—Bruce heard the steady thudding of footsteps. A moment later, the door rattled as something banged into it, and there was the hiss of a half-spoken curse.

"Robin," Bruce prompted gently, oddly hesitant to break its reverie. "We're about to have company. Don't let him see you, or hear you."

Robin's eyes were closed, but it waved an impatient hand in Bruce's direction as if to say _Yes, yes, I get it. Now leave me alone._

Bruce stepped backward into a deeper shadow, shifting his shoulders to rearrange his cape until it enveloped him completely. He might not be invisible, like Robin, but someone coming out into the night from a brightly-lit stairwell wouldn't be able to see him, just the same. There was more than one way to disappear, and he had been trained by the best.

The door finally cooperated and sprang open. A startled hand shot out, just managing to catch it before it slammed into the heating unit. Out stepped a man in his early forties, wearing a winter coat over what looked like either workout clothes or pajamas. The gray hairs and slightly-out-of-fashion glasses made him seem a bit older than he really was, but there was a sense of contained energy about him that made him seem younger. In one steady hand, he carried a pistol with the calm certainty of someone who knew how to use it.

"G.C.P.D.," he said, calling out to the apparently-empty rooftop. "If this is some kind of prank, you've picked the wrong apartment."

The man took a couple of wary steps out onto the roof proper, scanning the night as he gave his eyes time to adjust. He kept his gun moving with his line of sight, sweeping it in steady, wide arcs. He kept the stairwell at his back and his knees bent slightly, ready for an attack.

"Captain," Bruce said by way of greeting. He stepped forward, leaving the deepest part of the shadows and shifting his cape to reveal the yellow of his belt and the symbol on his chest. "I see you found my note."

Jim Gordon whirled around to face him, gun poised, and froze. Slowly, the gun dropped to point at the concrete and gravel of the rooftop. "I thought you were dead," he said bluntly.

"Just otherwise occupied," Bruce said.

Gordon holstered his weapon and walked forward. His eyes passed right over the spot where Robin was standing, as expected. "Well, the next time you decide to take a three-month vacation, maybe send me a warning, huh?" He reached for the pocket where he habitually kept his cigarettes, but stopped halfway there. He must have been in the middle of one of his never-ending attempts to quit. "Preferably _before_ I spend my off-hours trawling through hospital morgues and making up excuses to dredge the river."

Bruce had to fight the instinct to apologize, for the second time that night. It didn't surprise him in the least that Gordon had spent his free time trying to figure out why the Batman had disappeared. Captain Jim Gordon of G.C.P.D. Homicide was many things, but most of all he was a good man.

At the moment, he was also angry. "So what prompted the miraculous return?" he asked. He cupped his hands and blew on them; summer was on its way, but it wasn't here yet, and the nights were still chilly. "Not that I'm not glad to see you alive and well and all, but why the house call? Something wrong with the precinct roof all of a sudden?"

"This seemed simpler," Bruce said. "No security cameras."

"Look, I've got my little girl this weekend," Gordon said. "She's asleep downstairs right now." He paused, as if waiting for Bruce to say something, but of course the Batman remained silent and still. Gordon sighed. "Right. What is it you need?"

"To get back in the saddle," Bruce said. "I was hoping you could throw me a case. Something low-key that slipped through your people's fingers."

Gordon's eyes narrowed. "That's not like you. Honestly, most of the time you've got a better handle on the crime in this city than the mob bosses running it, let alone a simple cop."

"I've been …" Bruce paused. _Forcibly retired_ , came to mind, followed by _thoroughly distracted by my faerie house-guest_ , neither of which were viable as responses.

"Otherwise occupied, yeah." Gordon rolled his eyes. "So you said." He stuffed his hands into his coat pockets and shifted his weight from foot to foot, stamping them slightly. "Your disappearance have anything to do with those absurd rumors coming out of Metropolis?"

Bruce blinked. Luckily the white lenses in his cowl kept it from being visible as a sign of confusion.

Gordon sighed again. "Okay, I get it, you can't tell me. You and your secrets. I suppose if there's anything that would make you ditch us for this long, it's some wacko flying around in primary colors claiming to be a space alien." He snorted. "And people in Metropolis call _us_ weird."

Bruce carefully filed that information away to research later. Just how self-indulgent had his injury made him, that he'd missed something like that? "A case?" he prompted.

"Give me some time," Gordon said. "You think I memorize every crime that comes through the precinct, just in case you're interested?"

Bruce waited.

Gordon looked at him blankly. "I'll need to go through my files," he explained, in the exasperated tone of someone trying very hard to be patient, and failing miserably. "Give me twenty-four hours, at least."

"Is that the best you can do?"

"Yes," Gordon snapped. "As I may have mentioned, I have my daughter this weekend. Don't push your luck, or I won't go to the office on a Sunday after all." He reached for his cigarettes again, stopped himself a second time, and shook his head. "Christ. And to think I actually missed you, a little bit."

Bruce turned to leave.

"Hey," Gordon said. "Wait a second. I …"

Bruce paused, but didn't turn back around to face him.

For a moment, Gordon was silent. "Let somebody—a victim or a bystander, I mean, not just a criminal—get a good look at you," he finally said, in a quiet sort of voice. "Or throw a reporter a bone and let one of them snap a blurry phone picture."

"Why?" Bruce asked.

"Folks need to know you're back," Gordon said, very simply. "Maybe it won't fix everything all at once, but it will stop it from getting any worse in the meantime."

Guilt flared up in Bruce's chest again, but he pushed it down. "It wasn't my choice," he said quietly, surprising himself. "I came back as soon as I could."

"I know you did," Gordon said. "I may not know a lot about you, but I never thought for a second you'd just given up, or walked away."

Bruce smiled, and reflexively dropped his head to hide it, even though Gordon was behind him. "Thank you," he said gruffly.

With that, he took two big steps and jumped off the roof, flaring his cape to control his fall. Somewhere behind and above him, he heard Gordon mutter something—it sounded like _Typical_ —before calling out, "You're welcome!"

It wasn't until Bruce slipped into the shadows near the car that he remembered he'd left Robin on that roof, oblivious and staring at the stars. He stopped in his tracks, turned around, and listened, trying to figure out if Gordon had gone back inside the stairwell yet. He couldn't just grapple back up there and risk being seen; so much of the Batman's power was in his myth, and reappearing because he'd forgotten something ruined some of the mystique. Granted, it was Gordon, who was more likely to see him as a fellow human being than anybody else he could have encountered, but he didn't—

A soft slap of bare feet on asphalt heralded Robin's sudden appearance at Bruce's side. "Did you find what you were looking for?" it asked him, tilting its head inquisitively. It must have climbed down the wall after him.

"Yes," Bruce said.

"What was it?"

"A place to start." He gestured to the car waiting up ahead. "Are you ready to go home?"

Robin hesitated. "Can I come back? Next time?"

"Maybe," Bruce replied. "If you behave."

Robin smiled. It was one of its rare smiles, the genuine ones that expressed happiness rather than some kind of threat or warning. "I missed the stars," it said, low and heartfelt.

Bruce felt the urge to smile back. "I think I did, too," he said.

/~*~/


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

It began to rain the next day, starting around four in the afternoon and continuing in a steady stream well into the night. By the time Bruce normally started his patrol, the streets were bordered by an inch and a half of running water rushing toward the storm drains. The air was thick and cold, and no stars could be seen through the cloud cover. It was the sort of evening where a reasonable man would curl up by the fireplace with a good book and ignore the outside world.

"You promised," Robin said, petulant. It was bouncing on its toes, pointing imperiously at the wall that hid the secret elevator. "I behaved, just like you said."

Then again, Bruce had seldom been a reasonable man. Gordon _had_ gone into the office on a Sunday to get him a file; it would be rude not to at least drop by to pick it up. Patrolling might be rather useless—the weather was bad enough to make even the most dedicated criminals stay inside, and muggings and street assaults would be few and far between on a night when pedestrians didn't want to brave the elements to visit bars or night clubs—but maybe that was a blessing. Bruce still hadn't really tested himself yet, and tonight would give him a perfect opportunity to do so without actually having to fight.

"All right," Bruce said. "We'll go out. Just for a little while."

They got underway with much less fuss, this time. Having already completed its exploratory tour of the Cave the night before, Robin was relatively patient as it waited for Bruce to change into the suit. In fact, it was less excitable in general than it had been up until now, which was the other reason Bruce had agreed to take it out again. If letting it stare at the stars for half an hour every day kept it somewhat calm and cooperative, it was well worth the time wasted.

There was another fight about getting into the car; Robin was still convinced the thing was out to get it, for some reason. Bruce spent a good five minutes trying to explain the concept of a _machine_ , a thing that could be programmed to react to certain parameters without being alive, or capable of making its own decisions. Robin tilted its head at him, utterly confused—to it, if a thing could move then it could think, and that was that. The car had attacked it, therefore it bore it some kind of ill will.

"It isn't going to hurt you," Bruce said. "It didn't yesterday, did it?"

"It hissed at me," Robin said.

"But it didn't _hurt_ you," Bruce repeated. "It's harmless. I promise."

Robin snorted and crossed its arms.

Bruce sighed. "Either get in the car, or stay here," he said firmly. "Choose."

Robin hissed at him in disapproval, but it did eventually slip into the passenger side. Bruce had to stifle a smile as he watched it curl up as tight as possible in the center of the seat, in an attempt not to let anything but the balls of its bare feet touch any part of the car. Bruce couldn't resist accelerating just a little harder than was strictly necessary to get out of the Cave, making Robin yelp quietly and grab at the door handle to keep from being flung into the seat-back. It was the first non-graceful movement the creature had ever made, at least that Bruce had seen.

Apparently he didn't hide his amusement very well, because Robin huffed and glared at the side of his head. "That wasn't funny," it said sharply.

Bruce turned just enough to make his mouth visible from the passenger seat. One half of it was quirked slightly upward, unnoticeable except to someone—or some _thing_ —who knew him well. "It's a little bit funny," he protested. "Immortal creature of air and shadow, and you're afraid of my car."

Robin just scowled harder. "It already doesn't like me, Bruce. There's no need to antagonize it."

Bruce went still, save for the slight motions needed to control the car. He'd told Robin to call him Bruce that first night, out in the garden, but this was the first time it had done so. It tended to sneak up on him rather than call for his attention, and in normal conversation it avoided using a moniker for him at all. This time, his name had seemingly just slipped out, unnoticed—and it was strange how _not_ strange it was. Alfred called him "'sir" or "Master Bruce," and his employees and the board of directors called him "Mr. Wayne;" he supposed Selina called him Bruce, but then again she'd known him for a very long time.

"What's wrong?" Robin asked. From the corner of his eye, Bruce could see that it had tensed, obviously able to sense his surprise. "Is the car insulted?"

"No, the car is fine," Bruce said. "It _can't_ be insulted, because it isn't sentient—never mind," he added hastily, when Robin started to look confused again. "You shouldn't use my name, when I'm in the suit. That's all."

"Oh," Robin said. "Because it's a secret?"

"Yes," Bruce said. "Nobody knows who I am, when I go out at night. If you use my name, someone might overhear you and figure it out."

"And that would be bad, for you," Robin said thoughtfully.

Bruce shifted in his seat, suddenly wary. "It would draw a lot of unwanted attention," he said, after a slight pause. "For _both_ of us."

Robin tightened its arms around its bent knees. "I wouldn't," it said quietly. It looked away. "Protecting our master's secrets is built into the binding. I couldn't betray you, even if—" It cut off abruptly, obviously uncomfortable. "You can compel me, if you wish, but there's no need. Until your year is up, your secrets are safe, mortal man."

Bruce was silent for a moment, thinking about what Robin had said—and more importantly, what it had stopped itself from saying. "Well, you can't go back to calling me 'mortal man', either. It would just raise more questions."

Robin shrugged. "What does your warrior friend call you?"

"My—who?"

"The man from last night," Robin clarified.

"Captain Gordon," Bruce offered. "He's a cop—a policeman." At Robin's blank stare, he added, "He enforces the laws. Catches the criminals who break them, to protect people."

"A knight, then," Robin said. "But a warrior all the same. What name does he use for you?"

Bruce hesitated. It sounded a little silly, when it was said outright, and he'd never exactly introduced himself before. There was no real point—at first, he'd been an urban legend to the criminal underworld, with many different names; it wasn't until the press got wind of him that the single name started to stick. By then, everyone knew who he was without him having to do a thing other than step out of a shadow and speak. Most of the time he didn't even do that much, save with Gordon.

"Batman," Bruce said eventually. If he said it confidently enough, maybe Robin wouldn't notice the inherent absurdity. Then again, what would a creature like Robin think was absurd in the first place? "Sometimes the Batman, or just the Bat."

Robin nodded once, looking intrigued. "A creature of air and shadow," it said.

Bruce felt his lips turn up in a smile again, although this one was more like one of Robin's grins—somehow predatory. "I suppose I am, at that," he said. He slipped the car into a small, dirty alleyway just inside the city proper, and shut everything down. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Robin smiled back at him, eyes unnaturally bright in the darkness. "Let's fly, you and I," it said. "Batman."

/~*~/

"No, no," Robin said, exasperated. "You have to _trust_. You're only committing halfway, and it's costing you your balance."

"It's not as easy as you make it look," Bruce said, swishing his cape to dislodge any dirt he'd picked up when he'd slammed into the side of the small office building instead of landing gracefully on the roof, as Robin had done. "I told you that gap was too far for me to clear without a grapple."

"It shouldn't be," Robin insisted. It tapped one bare foot on the lip of the roof, clearly thinking. "Maybe you should try it with your eyes closed this time."

"No," Bruce said.

"But that would _force_ you to—"

"No." Jumping off a rooftop without a grapple already secured was reckless enough; there was no chance he would risk it blind.

Robin rolled its eyes at him. Who had it picked that mannerism up from? "Fine," it hissed. "This is going to take forever."

"You have very little patience," Bruce said, wincing as he stretched out his tight, sore muscles. The armor protected him from the majority of the impact, but it still left bruises every time he missed his mark. He was profoundly grateful that the storm was keeping the streets relatively empty—it would have ruined the Batman's image, if anyone had seen him falling off rooftops and crashing into windows. He was lucky he hadn't broken anything yet. "Did you know that?"

"Two hours," Robin said. "Two _hours_ , and you still can't jump properly!"

Bruce fought against a rising tide of irritation. "Maybe you're not explaining it very well," he said, doing his best to keep his voice calm and non-confrontational, even with the Batman growl built in. It was dangerously easy to scare Robin with that voice, and that would do much more harm than good, at this point. "I don't sense things the way you do. You have to be more specific."

Robin hissed out its version of a sigh and flopped melodramatically down on the lip of the roof, like a Shakespearian actor in the midst of a big death scene. It was about half an inch from the edge, with absolutely no regard for the fifty-foot drop to the street below. It looked both ridiculous and pathetic, with its black hair soaked through and plastered to its forehead, lying in a shallow puddle.

"What was the point in binding me, if you aren't going to _use_ it?" Robin demanded, sullen.

Bruce walked across the few steps between them and fell into an easy crouch, although he stayed several inches further away from the edge. So far, his own reflexes and the occasional helping hand from Robin had saved him from any serious falls, but there was no need to go looking for a chance to slip, not on rain-slick concrete five stories up. "Tell me how," he tried again.

"I can't. It's instinctive." Robin flapped its hands weakly up at Bruce, as if to demonstrate its helplessness. "Something in you already knows, or you couldn't have held me long enough for the binding to form in the first place."

"Instinctive doesn't necessarily mean inexplicable," Bruce said. "Try to describe how it should feel."

"It shouldn't _feel_ like anything," Robin said, obviously just as frustrated as Bruce was. "The binding _is._ All you have to do is trust it."

"I've been trying," Bruce said.

"Well, try _again_ ," Robin snapped. "Ignore the rest of the world; it's just a distraction. The binding is there, within you." Its words came out bored and apathetic, probably because it had repeated them so many times tonight. "Just find it."

Reluctantly, Bruce closed his eyes to help him concentrate, for what would be the eighth time in the last two hours. It violated his instincts and every lesson his teachers had instilled in him to ignore his surroundings like this, but Robin had promised to warm him if anyone approached.

With some difficulty, Bruce shut down his awareness of his external senses one at a time. First to fade were the ubiquitous scents of a crowded city—both the unpleasant, from sewer covers and dumpsters, and the more neutral, like burning fuel from cars or fresh paint from refurbished buildings. He let the more pleasant odors go last, like freshly-cut spring grass from the park down the block, or the clean scent that always followed a heavy rain, more the absence of typical smells than a particular odor in and of itself.

Sounds were harder. They weren't as constant, so dismissing them was less about identifying and blocking an individual sound as not allowing himself to be distracted when a new one appeared. The rumble of late-night traffic was the easiest, a low hum that could be dismissed en masse. Sirens were tough, by their very nature; they were designed to be disruptive, to catch attention. The rush of the wind and the soft patter of raindrops stayed the longest, partially due to their proximity and partially because they were almost soothing, helping him meditate instead of distracting him. Faintly wistful, he forced those away as well.

Now the only sounds were internal ones: the beating of his heart and the whoosh of air in and out of his lungs. Without breaking his concentration, Bruce tried to recall exactly how it had felt, that moment in the garden when he'd spoken Robin's name as a Command and the binding had formed.

"You're afraid."

It was Robin's voice, coming from what seemed like a long way away. There was something calming about it, something that let Bruce hear it without disrupting the not-quite-a-trance he'd painstakingly put himself in.

"Why?" Robin asked, its tone soft and smooth in the imposed silence of Bruce's meditation. "What is it that you fear?"

Bruce ignored it. Trying to speak now would shatter his concentration. He _had_ felt something that night in the garden—the soft, perfect snap of a puzzle piece falling into place inside his chest. He just had to recreate that moment, recapture that feeling of unfettered power.

"Oh," Robin said, a soft noise of surprise. "It's not _me_ that you fear after all, is it?"

Bruce felt a chill that had nothing to do with the persistent cold rain seeping through his armor. Most people, even the few who knew him well, assumed his iron control over his emotions was just a quirk of his character, that he'd been born stoic or perhaps that he simply didn't feel as strongly or deeply as others. The truth was exactly the opposite: Bruce sought control over himself and his reactions precisely because it was difficult for him. He remembered the consuming rage that he had felt, standing face to face with the man who had murdered his parents, or the cold hatred and desire for revenge as Bane walked away and left him to die in that gutter. He had always feared the depth of his emotions, and what he might do if he ever truly unleashed them.

Robin hummed thoughtfully. "You fear the binding," it said, "not because of what it might do to you—but for what _you_ could do with _it_."

The next time he crossed paths with Bane, if he was strong enough to match him blow for blow, what would stop Bruce from hurting him the way that he'd been hurt? It would be so easy to slip up, to leave Bane a vegetable in a hospital bed, or even a corpse in the morgue. Maybe he could justify it once, but as soon as he took the first step down that path, it would make the next one so much easier. Each time, it would be less of a fight, until one day he would look up and realize how far he'd strayed from the road he'd meant to walk. He would become the same kind of monster he'd forfeited everything, including his life, to stop.

"You sought this," Robin whispered. "You fought for it, and in time you will die for it. Will you choose to let your fear keep you from _using_ it, while you can?"

Was he strong enough to control it? How much good could he do, if he had the power to really make a difference on the streets?

 _This_ , Bruce thought, _is the problem with making a deal with the devil. It's always more persuasive than you expect it to be._

"Make your choice, Batman," Robin said, with an air of finality. "Are you a creature of air and shadow, or not?"

Bruce opened his eyes. At some point, Robin had gotten to its feet in front of him. With Bruce crouched, their faces were at the same height. From this close, Bruce could see the individual specks of color in Robin's namesake eyes, brighter than should be possible in the dark night.

"Trust the binding," Robin said. "If you stop fighting it, it will help you."

Bruce took a deep breath and made his decision. "All right," he said. With his exhale, he let go of his meditative focus, removing the blocks he'd placed on his senses. As he did so, he imagined his fear and doubts dispersing as well, fading away into the night. If Robin was right, the binding would come to him if he just relaxed and stopped trying so hard.

Slowly, the city came alive around him. He almost flinched as the noise washed over him, far too loud after his meditative silence. Why were there so many sirens in the vicinity? Surely Robin would have said something if the building they were on had caught on fire, or been robbed?

When Bruce glanced down, though, the streets around them were empty.

Bruce frowned. An angry horn blared in his ears, but no cars drove by. He could hear the rumble of a truck engine, rattling to life after stopping at a red light, but there were no vehicles close enough. How could he possibly hear those things from a distance, especially over the steady drumming of the hard rain?

He held out one palm, trying to judge the force of the falling water. It _sounded_ like a significant downpour, but watching the drops hit his glove confirmed that it was a light, if persistent, rain. He shouldn't have been able to hear it at all, not against the concrete and gravel of the rooftop. The drops were too small to have a significant impact—and yet, he could feel them, even through his glove.

Bruce blinked and scanned his surroundings again. It was brighter out than it should be, even with the rain reflecting the street lights, like the shadows had pulled back. Or, no—he could still see the edges of the shadows, sharp and definite, but he could see further into them than ever before. He could make out intricate details of the stonework on one of the office buildings three blocks down, at a distance that should have left everything slightly fuzzy, especially with the rain in the air.

He stood, and he could feel every shifting piece of his armor adjusting as he did so. More unsettling, he moved too quickly and ended up jumping slightly instead of just rising from his crouch. He only got perhaps half an inch into the air, but even so he could feel the way each and every air current tugged at his cape and his armor. He knew exactly how to shift his weight to bring the soles of his boots back into contact with the roof without making a sound. After he landed, he could feel the impossibly slow turn of the planet beneath his feet.

It was the same sense that he'd had, briefly, when the binding had first formed—as if reality was somehow more solid, more present, than it had ever been before. Every edge was sharper, every color richer, every smell or taste or touch more vivid. He was more aware, not just of his surroundings but also of his own body, in control of his movements with an inhuman precision.

"What just happened?" Bruce asked.

Robin was grinning. "Welcome to my world," it said. "Are you ready to try again?"

"I think so," Bruce said, cautiously. "Let's just go a little slow, for the first—Robin!"

It was already sprinting for the opposite edge of the roof. "Come and catch me!" it yelled back, still grinning. "If you think you can!"

Bruce scowled and took off running.

/~*~/

When dawn broke, it found Bruce and Robin sitting side-by-side on the metal scaffolding of a half-finished high rise on the east side of downtown. They were facing the water, watching the sun come up through the clouds. It had stopped raining some time ago, but the residual water in the air made for a spectacular array of color on the horizon.

"That was _fun_ ," Robin said brightly. Its bare feet kicked back and forth over the hundred-foot drop. "Let's do it again!"

Bruce shook his head, still breathing a little hard from their breakneck climb up the metal skeleton of the construction site, after which he'd called a truce on their impromptu three-hour game of tag. They had run across most of Gotham tonight, criss-crossing back and forth from neighborhood to neighborhood, without ever touching the streets below. He'd only needed to fire his grapple a handful of times in the entirety of their chase, trusting instead to his newfound strength and agility to keep him bouncing from one handhold or ledge to the next. He had never been afraid of heights, particularly, but if he had tonight would have cured him of it. He could sprint along a narrow metal beam a hundred feet above the ground without worrying for an instant that he might lose his balance.

He'd had his share of miscues and mistakes, of course—just because he'd finally gotten hold of the physical abilities the binding offered him didn't mean he knew exactly how to use them, yet—but the learning curve wasn't nearly as steep as he'd been expecting. He'd only had one real scare, when he'd overshot a gargoyle he'd meant to use as his next grip, and found himself instead soaring out into the open space between buildings, three stories high. His cape had slowed him down and let him control his descent, up to a point; he'd still hit the ground with enough force to seriously injure himself. He'd expected at least a broken bone or two, maybe a concussion, but instead he'd instinctively rolled into the impact and bounced back up to his feet, unhurt.

Robin called it _resilience_ , which—along with the agility and sense of balance that let him move faster and more accurately than ever before—was Bruce's favorite part, so far. He no longer had to be careful not to push his body past its limits; now, only something that would kill a normal human would do any lasting damage to him. Not that he planned on testing that.

"It's long past time we should have gone home," Bruce said eventually, staring into the sun. With his heightened vision, the colors were remarkable—textured and layered in an intricate pattern he couldn't have perceived, yesterday.

Robin grimaced. "Do we have to?"

"Sun's almost up," Bruce said, nodding his head toward the pink-and-orange clouds. "People will be out on the streets soon. We don't want to be spotted."

"Want me to make us invisible? As long as you don't move very far away, I think I can manage."

"No." Bruce actually chuckled. "Fun as that sounds, we really need to go. I need to sleep, for one thing."

Robin grinned at him. " _Do_ you?" it asked.

Bruce took stock of his physical state. He _was_ tired, although not nearly as tired as he should have been after so much physical activity. He hadn't quite been up for twenty-four hours yet—with his mission restored, and his injury as an excuse, he'd made it clear that no one should expect him at Wayne Enterprises until at least noon, and that only on a good day—but even on that schedule dawn should have been bedtime, or close to it. He was more than tired enough to fall asleep, but he should have been dead on his feet by now, and he wasn't.

"Another perk?" he asked.

Robin shrugged. "I don't sleep at all," it reminded him. "At the very least, you ought to sleep _less_."

If nothing else, that would make juggling two separate lives a lot easier. When it came to choosing between his company and the mission, the mission had always come first. It would be nice to have enough waking hours to give both the attention they deserved.

"Come on," Bruce said, getting to his feet. After all night relying on it, he barely noticed the way his body automatically shifted, compensating for the winds to keep him safely standing on the narrow strip of metal they'd been using as a bench. It seemed to work better the less he thought about it, anyway. "Let's get back to the car."

"Race me?" Robin offered, bouncing up to its feet.

"Not this time," Bruce said, trying to be firm. "Try to stick to the shadows and dark corners, where you can. The city is waking up."

Robin shrugged and jumped off the scaffolding, catching the beam with its hands and swinging itself over to another perch a little closer to the ground. Bruce watched it for maybe two or three seconds, vaguely jealous despite his upgraded skill-set. All the agility and strength and balance in the world could never make him as light or sure on his feet as Robin was naturally. The gap had closed, of course—but the gulf between what Bruce had been before, and what he was now, was just as wide as the one that remained between him and Robin. Three hours of chasing it through the streets, and he'd never once caught it without Robin stopping to wait for him.

 _It can still kill you_ , Bruce found himself thinking. _You'll put up a better fight now, but you can't win. Not unless it lets you._

"Are you coming?" Robin called out, now a good twenty feet below him. "I thought you wanted to go home!"

Rather than answer, Bruce picked out a pathway downward and jumped off the building, his cape flapping behind him.

/~*~/

Two blocks away from the car, Bruce stopped in his tracks. Without thinking about it, he reached out a hand and grabbed Robin's shoulder, halting it just as it was about to swing down onto a fire escape ladder. "Did you hear that?" he asked.

Robin cocked its head at him. "I hear lots of things. Which one do you mean?"

They were standing on the roof of an apartment building, not much different from the one where Gordon lived, although several miles across the city and in a decidedly worse part of town. From the condemned building next door—a library once, if Bruce remembered right, but now a hollow husk after a fire at least a decade earlier—Bruce could make out a strange clanking sound, followed a moment later by a man's voice. Bruce couldn't decipher the words, but from the tone it was obviously cursing of some flavor.

"I need to get closer," he said. "Stay—"

Robin was already moving, headed for the burned out building.

Bruce sighed. "Here," he muttered under his breath. He followed it, using a dumpster as a stepping stone to cross the alleyway between buildings.

"Two men," Robin said when Bruce reached him, holding up a pair of fingers for emphasis. It was crouched on a narrow second-story windowsill, head tilted toward the cracked, soot-stained glass. "They're arguing about something."

Bruce listened from his vantage point on the sloped roof, leaning over the edge for a better angle. The voices weren't loud enough to carry beyond the walls of the library, but his enhanced hearing could decipher the words anyway.

"— _quiet, why don't you? You want to bring the whole damn precinct down on us?_ "

" _Lay off it. It's too early for this shit._ "

" _I'm not the one who made the schedule. It was either pinch the shipment at dawn, or deal with Falcone's guys guarding it. You tell me which one is smarter, huh?_ "

Bruce felt his mouth pull into a thin, tight frown. He might have been somewhat out of the criminal loop, these days, but just watching the evening news was enough to tell him Gotham was still in turmoil from the botched drug raid last month. Too much of the low-level talent had ended up either in prison or the local morgue, and the power vacuum was creating a cut-throat atmosphere on the streets. Any halfway decent neighborhood distributor fancied themselves the next rags-to-riches drug lord, and most of the top bosses seemed inclined to let their lower ranks fight it out amongst themselves, either as punishment or incentive. If Bruce had to guess, these two were opportunists—hoping to use the chaos to mask the theft of enough product to get their own little street corner empire up and running.

He should walk away. This wasn't a mugging or a street assault; the real victims here were the addicts who would buy the drugs, or the kids who'd be offered them in an effort to get them hooked. Bruce was cynical enough to know that pulling a few crates out of circulation wouldn't save them—there were always drugs to be found, for those willing or desperate enough to go looking. No one's life was in immediate danger, save perhaps the thieves themselves for crossing Falcone, if his enforcers caught up to them. This wasn't the sort of crime the Batman normally involved himself with, unless he was marking faces for later investigations or tailing somebody to a bigger fish. Not to mention the sun was rising rapidly now, with morning rush hour not far behind it, increasing his chances of getting spotted.

Then again, he was out of practice, and he'd wanted a simple problem to get him back in the saddle. It wasn't as if pulling drugs off the street was ever a _bad_ thing, and Gordon had asked him to make his reappearance known to the public. Maybe scaring some sense into a pair of petty thieves wasn't what he'd had in mind, but Bruce would take what he could get.

"Go back to the Manor," Bruce said, beginning to double-check his gear and weapons in preparation for a fight. "I'll be a few minutes behind you."

Robin glanced up at him, frowning. "I don't understand," it said.

"There's something I have to do," Bruce said. " _Alone_ ," he added sharply, when it was obvious Robin was about to ask.

It huffed at him. "More secrets?"

"I need to focus," Bruce said. "I can't have you distracting me."

"I can be—"

"Robin," Bruce said, voice suddenly harsh. "Go back to the Manor, now, or I'll make it a Command."

Robin stiffened, face going blank. "Fine," it said. A moment later, it had vanished.

Bruce activated his radio just long enough to update Alfred—which he had done, periodically, throughout the night, or else Alfred would have been out looking for him hours ago—and jumped lightly down onto the same windowsill Robin had been perched on a moment before. His boots, much wider than Robin's bare feet, had a difficult time finding enough purchase to support his weight, but with his increased balance and agility, he managed. One swift tap broke the cracked glass enough for him to slip inside.

The fire had gutted the building almost completely, such that the second floor where Bruce entered was little more than a ring of blackened floor beams adjacent to the exterior walls. Even a decade later, the place reeked of smoke and water-logged wood, although Bruce couldn't tell if the stench was truly that strong or if his enhanced senses were picking up things a normal human couldn't have registered. The pale, weak dawn sunlight streamed in through cracks and holes in the walls, painting streaks against the shadowy interior.

Bruce moved carefully, aware both of the danger of collapsing part of the floor with his weight and making a noise that might be heard by the men below. Their voices were clearer now, still arguing with the good-natured antagonism of people who have worked together long enough to have memorized each other's particular quirks. The clanking was louder, too; as Bruce got closer, he could see that one of the men was attacking a packing crate with a crowbar, while the other hovered around nervously behind him. Bruce could also make out the back of a delivery truck, its open doors a gaping shadow. They must have pulled it up to the section of collapsed wall.

"Come on, come on," the hovering one said. "This is taking too long."

"Will you shut up and let me work?" the second man said. He stopped to wipe at sweat on his forehead, despite the early-morning chill. "This thing is sealed up _tight_. I almost got it."

Gordon wanted the Batman to make a scene? Well, Bruce wasn't going to get a better invitation than that.

In one smooth motion, Bruce leaped down from the second story, landing with a massive whoosh of his cape right in front of the two men. "Too late," he told them, and _moved._

He hadn't expected much from a couple of anonymous thugs. These were the kind of fights he was over-qualified for even before Robin had come along, so he didn't bother with any tricks or traps—no smoke bombs to give him cover, or luring the two apart so that he could take them on one at a time. There was no need. A few zip ties and a pair of well-placed punches, and he'd have these guys trussed up for Gordon in ten seconds or less.

Even with low expectations, though, Bruce wasn't prepared for how _easy_ it was. He'd always been fast, and good at reading his opponent's move before he made it, but now it was almost like the two thieves were stuck in higher gravity. All their motions looked sluggish and labored while Bruce moved freely around them.

The man with the crowbar reacted relatively quickly, swinging the tool haphazardly at Bruce's face. The old Bruce would have lifted one arm to block it, letting the bar hit the reinforced armor on his forearms. It might have left a mild bruise, but it wouldn't have done any real damage. The new Bruce saw the crowbar coming with plenty of time to slightly adjust his stance, turning his head just enough that the blow slid past him, maybe an eighth of an inch from his chin. He could feel the disturbance as it passed, tiny ripples caused by displaced air particles.

Bruce had to fight the sudden urge to grin, wide and eager. A perfect pivot led him into a leg sweep, and the hovering man went down with a loud yelp; a low thunk marked him dropping some kind of weapon that he must have pulled when Bruce appeared. By then, the crowbar was coming around for a second swing, so Bruce pivoted again, dodging it just as gracefully as he had the first. This time, he stepped forward, inside the man's reach, and struck out in a hard jab that hit him near the solar plexus. Crowbar Man crumpled like a soda can, choking as all the breath left him in a rush.

Ten seconds, it turned out, had been overly generous. Bruce had needed less than three. He straightened, reaching to his utility belt for a handful of zip ties, and took a step back toward Nervous Man, to secure him before he recovered from his fall.

That was when the truck driver, whom Bruce had completely overlooked, stepped out of the cab and fired his gun.

Bruce felt the impact before the sound even registered, an explosion of heat near his ribcage. It was a high-caliber bullet, probably a .45, fired at close range from a handgun. The force of it knocked him flat, and for one long, terrifying second Bruce wasn't sure whether the armor had managed to stop the bullet or not. For an instant, all he could see were white pearls slowly falling to the pavement, splattered impossibly red with his mother's blood. He couldn't shake that image, not until his frantic fingers registered solid, smooth material across his side and stomach. The armor was badly dented, and he felt like he'd been kicked in the ribs by a racehorse, but he wasn't bleeding out on the floor, the way he sometimes did in his nightmares.

 _Stupid,_ Bruce chastised himself, struggling to get his breath back. Trying to get his lungs to expand sent sharp, hot spikes of pain through the lower ribs on his right side. He'd been too eager, too overconfident in his new abilities, and he'd completely foregone his normal caution. If he had taken so much as thirty seconds to study the situation before jumping in the middle of it, he would have noticed the third man, and dealt with him accordingly. He hadn't made a mistake like that since his first few weeks in training.

The driver was coming forward now, gun raised. Off to the side, Crowbar Man was still on the ground trying to breathe, but Nervous Man was getting to his feet, yammering something about the Batman coming back from the dead. Bruce was out of time; he needed to get away before the driver fired again. He'd been shot in the armor before, and while it was top of the line and Kevlar-reinforced, all it could do was redirect and distribute the kinetic force of a gunshot. From such close range with a large caliber bullet, it was likely his ribs were cracked—if not broken outright—and he knew that when he peeled off the suit he'd find that his entire side and stomach were nothing but a massive bruise. He couldn't fight in that condition, no matter how much discipline he had.

Bruce tried to sit up, only to go suddenly, intensely light-headed from the pain. He fought to keep his vision from going dark, not allowing his breath to catch. He had one more second, perhaps two, before the driver put another bullet in him, from even closer range this time—and his cowl wasn't Kevlar-reinforced.

 _Move_ , he snapped at himself, but his body refused to cooperate. It was the obvious downside to his enhanced senses and motor control, one he should have been prepared for: He felt everything more clearly, including pain. Given another few heartbeats, Bruce could have compensated for it, but he didn't have time. The driver was only eight feet away now, gun re-aimed for the center of Bruce's forehead where he lay on the ground.

 _So much for my year,_ Bruce thought, dazed. He kept trying to move, but only succeeded in sliding a few inches across the ash-streaked foundation. _I guess Robin doesn't get to kill me after all._

The driver stopped three feet away, steadied the pistol with both hands, and started to pull the trigger.

That's when Robin appeared, seemingly leaping out of midair to collide with the driver, hissing in fury.

"What the _fu_ —" The gun went off with a deafening crack, but the bullet was way off target as the driver was knocked to the ground by the force of Robin's flying leap. A moment later, Bruce heard a sickening crunch, and the driver let out an awful, piercing scream.

"Wait!" Bruce yelled. He propped himself halfway upright, one hand pressed tight to his aching ribs and the other pushing off the hard floor. The driver was writhing on the ground a few feet away, hands clamped around one thigh; his femur had been snapped, so violently that part of the bone actually protruded through the skin just above his knee. "Robin!"

It had already moved, headed for the Nervous Man, who was trying to back away. He couldn't run anywhere near fast enough, and by the time Bruce got out another frantic shout—"Robin, no!"—the creature was on him. The man was screaming now, too— _no, no, please don't—_ but Robin didn't even seem to hear him. It was snarling, teeth bared like fangs, and it attacked so quickly that Bruce didn't even see the blow land. All he saw was the man crashing to the ground, one arm not so much broken as _shattered_ , hanging limply from a dislocated shoulder.

Robin grinned, feral, and crouched to retrieve the small blade the Nervous Man had been holding before Robin destroyed his arm. It turned its head and caught sight of Crowbar Man, who was staring with wide eyes and struggling to get to his feet to flee.

"Stop it," Bruce called out. He lurched upright, overbalanced, and ended up on his knees with one hand still on the ground to take some of his weight. "Robin!"

The creature ignored him. It watched Crowbar Man's ineffectual struggles to get away for a few moments, still grinning as if the man's terror amused it. "You can't run from me," it said, its voice a playful sing-song tone. Its eyes were brighter than Bruce had ever seen them. "I will break every bone in your body before you reach the street."

Bruce felt sick. He had insisted on calling Robin "it," refusing to let himself think of it like a child, but for the first time he was really seeing it for what it was—inhuman, in every sense of the word. Despite his caution, he'd let its smiles and its curious nature distract him from the vicious, amoral predator waiting underneath. For the first time, Bruce really _believed_ that it was going to kill him, without mercy or hesitation, the moment that the binding released it.

"Robin," Bruce said again, watching as it stalked forward with a knife in one small hand, ready to disembowel a man for no better reason than the fact that it wanted to. " _Stop,_ " he Commanded.

Robin went utterly, perfectly still.

Bruce finally managed to get his feet under him. He limped heavily, hunched over and breathing shallowly in consideration of his cracked ribs, but he could walk.

"He's getting away," Robin hissed, still rooted to the floor but leaning forward slightly, eager to give chase.

Bruce glanced to the side and saw that Crowbar Man was running toward the truck, without a single glance back for his wounded companions. He couldn't catch the man, not in his condition, and he wasn't about to trust Robin to bring him back alive, even with a Command. "Let him go," he said.

"Why?" Robin didn't seem angry so much as confused. "They were going to kill you."

"I'm aware of that," Bruce said. He switched on his radio and quietly told Alfred the address, adding, "Two men down, in need of an ambulance. Give me three minutes to get clear."

With Alfred's warm, calming, _Of course, sir_ , in his ear, Bruce finished walking over to where Robin had been immobilized. He stopped maybe a half-pace further away than he might have an hour earlier, when they'd been sitting together watching the sun rise. "What were you doing?" he asked quietly. "I told you to go home."

"I did." Robin tilted its head. "You were in trouble."

"I gave you an order," Bruce snapped. "You shouldn't have come back."

"I saved your life!" Robin hissed.

"You were about to kill that man," Bruce said. "You would have killed all three of them, if I hadn't stopped you."

"Of course," Robin said instantly, without an ounce of regret or hesitation.

Bruce watched it, wary. "Why?"

It blinked at him, obviously surprised. "They _hurt_ you," it said quietly, sounding lost.

Bruce suddenly remembered why it was so easy to overlook or dismiss the darker parts of Robin's nature. He sighed, regretting it instantly when his ribs protested. "We do not kill," he said flatly. "Ever."

"But—"

"No," Bruce said. "If you kill anyone, or hurt someone more than absolutely necessary to end a fight—"

"You were about to die!"

"— _even_ if it saves my life," Bruce added, speaking a little louder to discourage any further interruptions, "then you will never set a single foot outside your room until my year is up. Am I understood?"

Robin dropped its head. "I will not kill anyone," it said dutifully. "But I do _not_ understand."

Bruce wanted very much to sit down, or find some ice to put on his ribs, or maybe sink into a hot bath to alleviate the pressure in his chest. What he didn't want to do was give himself a migraine trying to explain ethics to a creature with no frame of reference for them.

"Go home," he said quietly.

Robin wilted. "I'm sorry," it whispered.

"Go home, Robin," Bruce repeated. "And stay there. We'll discuss this later."

Robin nodded, still subdued. With a ripple of displaced air, it vanished.

Bruce checked the remaining two men, verifying that they'd be all right until the ambulance could arrive, and slipped out the back just as he heard the sirens start to approach.

/~*~/

"What happened?" Alfred asked, as he wrapped Bruce's chest in tight bandages. The Cave's x-ray machine had confirmed that two of his ribs were cracked.

Bruce breathed shallowly, trying not to flinch or gasp as Alfred put pressure on the blossoming bruise that covered his entire side. "I made a rookie mistake," he admitted. "Missed the third man, and he got the drop on me."

"That's not like you," Alfred said, with slightly raised eyebrows.

"I know," Bruce said, through gritted teeth. "If Robin hadn't shown up at just the right moment …" He trailed off, uncomfortable.

"Why did he?" Alfred finished taping down the last layer of bandages and stood upright, inspecting his handiwork. "You'd think he'd be pleased at something killing you. It would release him ahead of schedule."

" _It_ , Alfred," Bruce said softly, feeling a brief chill. He leaned heavily back into his chair. "Maybe it just wants to be sure it gets to kill me itself," he added.

"Perhaps," Alfred said, sounding decidedly unconvinced. For now, though, he let the subject drop. "Might I convince you to take some pain-killers, sir?"

Bruce shook his head. "I'll be fine. I should get dressed."

"Tea, and then bed," Alfred insisted. "I've already informed the board that you won't make the meeting this afternoon."

Bruce considered trying to argue, but truth was he really didn't feel like going to the office today. Even without the pain from being shot, he wasn't sure he could handle corporate politicking just now. "Fine," he said, nodding.

It couldn't have been more than ten minutes later, finishing off his cup of tea at the breakfast table upstairs, that Bruce saw the breaking news story flash across the local morning talk show. The headline was simple: _The Batman Returns! The Real Deal, or a Fake?_

"Well," Bruce said, muttering into his cup, "at least Gordon will be happy."

Then the screen changed to a long-distance, relatively low quality photograph. Bruce froze, his tea halfway between the saucer and his lips.

The photograph was zoomed in too far, fuzzy and grainy, but still clear enough to leave no doubt. From a low angle, it showed the dark silhouette of Bruce in the armor, sitting casually on an exposed metal beam from a half-built skyscraper, bathed in the warm light of a rising sun.

At his side, smiling up at him, was a boy.

Bruce put down his tea. "Alfred?" he called. "We have a problem."

/~*~/


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"So," Gordon said, raising his eyebrows. He turned his head to blow his cigarette smoke such that the wind would carry it away from Bruce, off the precinct's rooftop and into the night beyond. "Who's the kid?"

Bruce held out a large tan envelope, the kind that was sized for non-folded sheets of paper and had an overhanging flap that secured with a small length of twine wrapped around a pair of buttons. Gordon's penchant for printing paper copies of things might help to protect Bruce's identity—anything electronic could be traced eventually, given enough time and the right skill-set—but a portable jump drive was markedly easier to carry in his utility belt. He remembered all too clearly the unfortunate results the first time he'd grappled off a roof with a loose-leaf folder tucked inside his cape.

Maybe eventually he'd convince Gordon to let him go fully digital with his casework. These days, surely a captain of a homicide division couldn't do his job properly without a desktop computer and an email address, at least. Bruce, by virtue of his position as CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation, might be a little ahead of the technology curve—considering his mobile phone that was small enough to carry unobtrusively in a suit pocket—but the rest of the world was catching up quickly. Computers had become ubiquitous, even in non-technical fields, and projections were showing that the rate of tech assimilation into daily life was only going to increase from here. The GCPD would have to adapt with the times, or else it would become as obsolete as the eight-track player that had once sat on the dresser in his parents' room.

In the meantime, Bruce stocked the Cave with boxes full of twine-and-buttons folders and printer cartridges.

"I brought the information you requested," Bruce prompted, lifting the envelope a little higher, in the unlikely event Gordon hadn't noticed it yet.

"Fantastic," Gordon said dryly, flicking ash onto the concrete and then replacing the cigarette between his lips. He grabbed the offered paperwork, slipped it promptly under one arm, and otherwise ignored it entirely. "So who's the kid?" he repeated, speaking around the cigarette with the ease of long practice.

Bruce let his cape settle around him, as if it might protect him from Gordon's disapproval. There were two reasons why he'd ignored Gordon's signal for the last three days, the first of which being that he didn't want to risk going out on the streets in the suit with busted ribs, in case he got into another unexpected fight. Luckily, the healing powers borrowed from Robin were doing their job; inside of twenty-four hours, he was in what he considered fighting shape—still hurting, but functional.

Still, he'd delayed the meeting another couple of days anyway, because his second reason had to do with gathering information on the case he'd picked up Sunday night. He didn't want to face Gordon's questions empty-handed, and so he had given himself two nights' worth of investigation, looking for another inroad to prosecute the members of a small-time car-jacking ring after the original arresting officer had blown the case with improper conduct. Bruce had harbored a hope that he could use the new evidence of crimes as a distraction, to avoid talking about Robin any more than necessary.

He should have known better. Gordon had a soft spot for kids, even more so than most cops. Bruce would have guessed it had something to do with the rarely-seen but oft-mentioned daughter, but of course Bruce knew firsthand that Officer Jim had been good with kids long before he was married, let alone a father. Twenty years ago, he'd been the only cop on the Wayne double-murder investigation who had treated eight-year-old Bruce like a human being, rather than a convenient talking camera at the crime scene, or worse, a mildly intelligent pet who could follow commands like "sit" and "stay." There was more than one reason that Bruce had picked Jim Gordon to help him, when he'd returned to Gotham to begin his mission.

"The kid isn't important," Bruce said eventually, as dismissively as possible. He nodded toward the folder under Gordon's arm. "If you get that in front of a judge, you can have a search warrant—"

"Not important?" Gordon interrupted. "The hell he isn't." He dropped his cigarette to the ground and stepped on the glowing tip, perhaps a bit harder than was strictly necessary. "I've got two grown men in the hospital who swear on their mothers' good names that your boy put them there. A third ran straight into a holding cell and begged my guys to lock it behind him, babbling nonsense about demons."

Bruce had privately hoped that Gordon was only privy to what the press knew—in other words, that some enterprising Gothamite had gotten a candid photo of the Bat and a mystery child. The picture itself had appeared in a thousand tabloid articles, and even the major news media was having fun with it. Speculation was rampant about the boy's identity and why he was sitting casually next to Batman a hundred feet in the air with no safety harness or climbing equipment. Did the Bat have a son? Was it a victim he'd rescued from something? Or was it just a random encounter, an excited little boy getting to play with his hero for a night? The same question was on everyone's lips in the city: _Who_ _'_ _s the kid?_

Fortunately, the picture was from too far away, and had been taken—as far as Bruce could tell—from a low-quality camera, maybe even a phone. Bruce was only recognizable because the armor was so distinctive; there wasn't enough definition of the boy's face to even begin a search for him. Of course, Robin wouldn't turn up in any missing persons files or elementary school yearbooks, but that in and of itself would have raised more questions. It was better that no one was looking. With a little luck, the whole thing would blow over in time, with no harm done.

Then again, the photograph wasn't the only problem. The criminal element in Gotham—which was, admittedly, half the city on a bad day—was awash in darker speculation, fueled by the accounts of the three men who had seen Robin in action. A little discreet investigation in dingy bars and back alleys revealed that the major bosses were dismissive of the rumors, but the street-level guys were walking soft and whispering in corners. _The Devil Child_ , they were saying. _The Bat has a little demon lurking in his shadow, one who will bathe in your blood and come out grinning._

That was a more accurate description than Bruce wanted to admit.

"I'm sorry about the men in the hospital," Bruce said, awkward and uncomfortable. The Batman did not apologize, because the Batman couldn't admit to making a mistake, even to ostensibly the only true ally he had. "I didn't mean for it to—happen like that."

Bruce hoped his hesitation was brief enough to go unnoticed. He'd originally meant to say _I didn_ _'_ _t mean for it to get involved in any fights,_ and had only caught himself at the last minute; Bruce wasn't sure what Gordon would think of him using "it" to refer to a child, but it wouldn't be good. If Gordon noticed the slight pause, though, he didn't say anything.

Instead, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared Bruce down, like Bruce was a rookie detective who'd seriously jeopardized an investigation with illegal behavior. "They might have to amputate that man's arm," he said, quiet and serious. "I saw the x-rays; his bones looked like crushed gravel. The doctors say they've never seen anything like it, outside of industrial accidents or bad car crashes."

Bruce had to consciously prevent himself from wincing. "I grounded him," he said, like a peace offering.

Robin hadn't liked one second of it, either, but so far Bruce had managed to hold firm despite three days and nights of constant complaining, begging, bargaining, apologies, and—worst of all—sulking. Its moods, which had always been fickle and mercurial, had become downright bewildering; it went from dejected silence to literally bouncing off the walls every three or four minutes. The cumulative effect was putting Bruce's teeth on edge, and he knew it was bothering Alfred, too, even if he was far too professional to ever say so. Sooner or later Bruce would crack, and let it out at least to the Manor's gardens to look at the stars, but for the lesson to stick the punishment had to be severe. The risk of Robin hurting someone else was too great to ignore.

"Oh, you _grounded_ him," Gordon said, rolling his eyes. "Great. I feel much better, knowing that." He shook his head, halfway between disappointed and disgusted. "Why was he out on the streets with you in the first place?"

"Training," Bruce said. That was the truth, after all, albeit reversed from what Gordon was most likely to assume. "With the storm clearing out the streets, I thought it would be safe enough. I wasn't expecting a fight."

Gordon coughed, and Bruce couldn't tell if it had started as a huff of laughter or genuine surprise. "You're training a preteen as a vigilante, and you thought it would be safe because all the _really_ bad guys were inside hiding from the rain?"

It did sound a little absurd when it was said outright like that. If Robin had been anything approaching a normal child, it would have been unconscionable, even without considering the drug dealers with guns and crowbars. A fall from a rooftop would be just as deadly as a bullet, if somewhat less likely to sneak up on him. No wonder Gordon was upset; as far as he knew, a kid's life was in danger.

"He's remarkably capable," Bruce said instead, finding himself curiously defensive. He hadn't realized how much Gordon's tacit approval meant to him, until he was in danger of losing it. "Unfortunate as it was, he _did_ put two grown men in the hospital and chase off a third. He can clearly handle himself in those kinds of—"

"I don't care," Gordon said, swift and stern. "He's a child."

Bruce felt his jaw clench. _It really isn_ _'_ _t_ , he thought, but of course he couldn't say that. "But he—"

"Is. A. Child," Gordon interrupted, pronouncing each word separately for emphasis. "You can't get him involved in this crusade of yours."

"I didn't mean to," Bruce said quietly, which was once again true but for different reasons than Gordon was likely to assume.

Gordon was still shaking his head, and continued as if he hadn't heard Bruce. "Risking your own life is your business," he said flatly. "What you do might be illegal, by the letter of the law, but I've always believed you had good intentions. That the whole brooding and shadows thing is just theatrics—underneath, there's a good man. I've never doubted that, not until today."

Bruce blinked, taken aback.

"You have _no_ right to put a child at risk," Gordon said. He hesitated once, but then deliberately met Bruce's eyes through the cowl and the white lenses. "I need his name."

"What?"

"The kid," Gordon clarified. "I need his name."

"No," Bruce said immediately.

"You don't have a choice." Gordon's stance shifted just a hair, more aggressive and confrontational, although his arms stayed safely crossed over his chest. "At the very least, we need to interview him. I've got no interest in trying to prosecute a little boy for criminal assault, but I've already had CPS in my ear asking for a psych evaluation and family history. They're worried about his behavior, that it shows potential … violent tendencies."

Bruce didn't need to hear the words spoken aloud to know what Gordon really meant. If Child Protective Services was involved, then they were afraid that the Batman was actually _fostering_ violent tendencies in a child. If Gordon had come here hoping for a different explanation, then Bruce had ruined that when he'd mentioned training. As far as the police were concerned, what Bruce was doing was child endangerment at the very least, if not emotional manipulation and outright abuse.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," Bruce said again. "Any of it."

"I really want to believe that," Gordon said, almost sadly. "Give me his name. And an address where we can find him."

Bruce shook his head. "I can't."

"It's not a request."

"I can't," Bruce repeated, insistent. "You don't realize what it is that you're asking."

Gordon's expression went hard, and a little cold. "I'm asking you to help me make sure a kid is all right. Is there a reason you don't want me getting close to him?"

"I thought you trusted me," Bruce said.

"I'm trying," Gordon said flatly. "But I get suspicious when people won't comply with reasonable requests. It makes me think they're trying to hide something."

Bruce felt his stomach drop in genuine dismay. "Do you really think that I would hurt a child?"

"Maybe not on purpose," Gordon said, honest as always. "Or maybe you've been fooling me, the last couple of years." He shook his head once. "I can't take that chance. Not with a kid's life in the balance. Please tell me you understand that."

Bruce hesitated.

Gordon scowled. "So help me God, I'll find a way to put you behind bars, if it comes to that. I still have an arrest warrant with Batman's description on it."

Bruce pressed his lips into a thin line. The good heart that made Gordon a perfect ally was now turning him into an enemy. Bruce didn't know how to change his mind short of telling him the truth—and that wouldn't work anyway, because Gordon would never believe him.

"Let me meet him," Gordan said, a little desperately, obviously clutching at any sort of compromise. "A conversation, to see for myself what's going on."

That would require either subjecting Robin to a new Command, or risking that it might attack Gordon, neither of which Bruce was ready to do. "I don't think—"

"Batman," Gordon said, interrupting him. "You've got two options, here. Either he talks to me, or to a panel of social workers. With or without your cooperation."

Bruce sighed. If he hadn't been wearing the cowl, he might have rubbed one gloved hand across his face. "You're not going to let this go, are you?"

"No," Gordon said.

"The first of the month," Bruce said. That gave him a little over a week to prepare, which wasn't in any way enough time, but was the most he thought he could get without protest, or making Gordon even more suspicious than he already was. "Midnight."

Gordon nodded, looking relieved. "Where?"

"I'll let you know," Bruce said curtly, and walked off the roof without looking back.

/~*~/

Robin fidgeted, stepping back and forth on the training mat like someone practicing half-forgotten dance moves. "Do I have to do this?" it asked. Its eyes kept flitting around the Cave, landing anywhere and everywhere except for Bruce's face. "I _said_ I was sorry."

"I know," Bruce replied. In contrast, he was standing perfectly still, weight carefully balanced and muscles loose and ready. "Apologizing is a good first step." Assuming, of course, that Robin actually meant it, and wasn't just trying to stay out of trouble. Even if it was sorry, it was probably more for upsetting Bruce than for hurting those men, but Bruce would take what he could get. "Guilt by itself doesn't solve anything, though. You have to learn from your mistakes, so that you don't make them again."

It shrugged, staring at the floor now.

"Come on," Bruce said. "You're not going to learn anything just standing there."

Robin shook its head.

Bruce remained still, trying his best to be patient. "We talked about this," he reminded it. "I'm not taking you back out on the streets without teaching you how to fight safely, and I can't correct your bad habits until I see what they are."

Robin shook its head a second time, still looking down.

"Robin," Bruce began.

"No," it interrupted. "I won't."

Bruce felt an urge to snap at it, frustrated as he was. Gordon's ultimatum was hanging over their heads, and Robin was being even less cooperative than normal. Bruce wasn't exactly sure what would happen if Robin did get dragged in front of a CPS committee, but he was sure that it wouldn't be good. He hadn't sprung that particular piece of information on Robin yet—it would either shrug it off as unimportant or worry incessantly, and he wasn't willing to risk the latter if he didn't have to—but now he found himself considering it. Maybe if Robin knew the stakes, it would be more willing to go along with the charade.

"Just try," Bruce said, aiming for gently persuasive and landing somewhere around flatly annoyed. "Please."

"No," Robin repeated.

Bruce sighed. "Why not?" he asked. "I thought you wanted to help me, when I go out at night." When it didn't say anything, he prompted, "Well?"

Robin nodded, still glum and subdued. It had glamoured itself a copy of Bruce's gym shorts and Gotham Knights t-shirt, but it hadn't quite sized them down far enough, making it look even smaller and bonier than normal. With its downcast eyes and subdued manner, it was hard to believe that it had put two men in the hospital last week. It looked about as threatening as a wet kitten at the moment.

"You have to train," Bruce said. "That's non-negotiable. You're not going out on the streets until you know how to fight without hurting anyone."

"I already promised," Robin said quickly, sounding almost desperate. "I won't hurt anyone else, I _swear_."

"Then let me teach you," Bruce said. "I'm sturdier than a regular human, thanks to you, but I know where the line is. I can show you how to be effective without risking that you might kill someone."

Robin finally looked up, its eyes wide and miserable in its narrow face. "Then show me," it said. "But don't ask me to attack you."

Bruce paused. "Is _that_ the problem?" he asked, half relieved and half annoyed at himself for not guessing that from the beginning. "It's just sparring, Robin. If you're worried about hurting me—"

Robin shook its head again. It dropped its eyes back to its bare feet.

"Then what?" Bruce asked, genuinely curious. He took in Robin's posture, its downcast eyes, its carefully defensive stance, and realized something else that he should have seen earlier. "Why are you afraid?"

Robin hesitated for a long moment, still fidgeting in place, shifting its weight from foot to foot. "Do you remember," it asked in a small, hesitant voice, "the first promise you made me?"

Bruce opened his mouth to say no, but thought better of it just in time. This was obviously important to Robin. What message would it send if Bruce couldn't remember the promises that he'd made? How could he keep them, if he didn't even care enough to know what he'd said?

Instead of asking Robin for clarification, Bruce went back through their conversation that first night in the garden, trying to remember. A few moments later, he knew he had found it. "I don't hurt people who can't fight back," he said quietly.

Robin nodded. "I'm not fighting you," it said, shaking its head. "I won't. If I fight back—"

It cut itself off before the thought was complete, but Bruce heard the rest anyway. _You_ _'_ _ll hurt me._

Bruce knelt on the training mat, one knee beside a bare foot, deliberately putting himself on Robin's level. "I can't promise that you won't get hurt, if you let me train you," he said. He held out his right arm, using his left to point to the notch just above his elbow that he could still feel, five years later. "Accidents happen sometimes, especially early on, when you're still learning." He reached out, waiting for Robin to place its hand into his before he moved it to his arm, letting its clever fingers feel the slight bump in the bone where the break had healed. "My first teacher gave me that," he said.

"What happened?" Robin asked, prodding the bone with careful, gentle pokes.

Bruce was careful not to flinch or pull away. It wasn't as if it still hurt, all this time later. "I slipped up during a drill," he admitted. "Basic moves—I knew better, by then, but sometimes things just go wrong. My teacher pulled the hit as much as she could, but I was already going down." He flexed his arm once, remembering the pain. At the time, it had been the worst injury he'd ever received. "Hit the concrete exactly the wrong way, and snapped the bone clean through."

Robin wrinkled its nose, presumably in sympathetic distaste. "Did it hurt?" it asked.

Bruce nodded. "For a while. I spent six weeks in a cast, unable to use my arm for much of anything." He shrugged. "In the long run, I'm grateful. I tended to favor my right arm when I fought; after six weeks of only being able to train with my left, they ended up about equal. Now I can even pass for left-handed, if I ever need to."

"Did she do it on purpose, then?" Robin asked. It let its hand drop from Bruce's arm.

"I don't think so," Bruce said. "But even if she did, I turned out the better for it." He hesitated. This was a dangerous lesson to teach a creature with no ethics, and a fine line to walk even for someone who had them, but Bruce thought Robin would understand what he meant. "There's a difference," he said slowly, "between hurting someone because you want to, and hurting them because you're trying to help them, or because of a mistake or an accident." He leaned forward a bit, forcing Robin to meet his eyes. "The first is unforgivable, and I promised you that I would never do it."

Robin nodded. "But the second?"

"Sometimes it can't be helped," Bruce said. "Learning to fight involves, well, _fighting_. If you don't at least pick up some bruises or sore muscles here and there, you're not working hard enough." He attempted a smile. "You'll probably give me some, too. Just be careful around my face—anything visible in a business suit is a little hard to explain to the board, especially after my skiing accident."

Robin's eyes went wide. "Me?" it said. "Hurt _you_?"

"Probably," Bruce said, with excessive nonchalance in his voice. He should have known that the idea would spook it; the binding probably had some kind of restriction on deliberately attacking the mortal who held it. Better to address it now, rather than waiting for it to panic the first time it hurt him—and it would, eventually, if they were going to do this. "Everyone makes mistakes, Robin, and you're both stronger and faster than me. As long as it's an accident, rather than a real attempt to do serious harm, I won't get mad."

Robin stepped from foot to foot, half-eager, half-hesitant. "Really?"

Bruce smiled, and this time it stuck. "I promise. Now," he said, getting back to his feet. He gestured for Robin to come toward him. "Stop short of actually breaking anything, but show me how you'd attack me, if you needed to."

Very slowly, Robin grinned.

/~*~/

"It's _hopeless_ , Alfred," Bruce said, shaking his head as he accepted the mug Alfred was holding out. Bruce had used the exploratory sparring session with Robin as a warm-up for that night's patrol, and so the mug contained a protein shake. Tea was reserved for afterward, when he came back alive and relatively whole and could afford a few hours' sleep. It was something about Alfred's unfathomable British sensibilities that required serving it in a mug anyway, unless of course he did it just to confuse Bruce. "I don't think it's ever been in a real fight in its life. It's all power and speed, with no control, no discipline, no _form_ whatsoever!"

Alfred turned away, just a hair too slow to hide the beginnings of a smile. "You were expecting a perfect martial artist?"

Bruce huffed through his mouthful of doctored protein shake. He wasn't sure what Alfred did to make these things marginally drinkable, and he knew better than to ask. He swallowed. "I could train Robin for _weeks_ and not have a passable fighter at the end to show for it. It just jumps at you and hopes for the best. It doesn't have an ounce of patience, or strategy."

"We'll have to add those to the list of things to teach it, sir," Alfred said. "I'm sure you'll manage somehow."

Bruce narrowed his eyes. He had the distinct feeling that Alfred was humoring him, but he chose not to push his luck. "At least it doesn't have any bad habits to unlearn," he muttered. He took another sip of the protein shake, grimacing. Not even Alfred was enough of a miracle worker to make them actually enticing, but between training and patrolling he needed the extra calories to stay in fighting shape. "Gordon's not going to drill it, anyway. It just needs to be convincing as a precocious, well-trained human child."

"Within a week," Alfred said pointedly. "Are you planning to give it a script of some kind to follow?"

Bruce glared down into his protein shake. With a sigh, he downed about half of it and tried not to gag. "I'm not sure what Gordon is going to ask it, beyond the obvious," he admitted. "Besides, if I coach it _too_ well, Gordon will be able to tell and we'll be in worse trouble."

"Aren't we always," Alfred said, somewhat wistful. He finished setting out the pieces of the suit, pausing to brush an imaginary speck of dust off a gleaming gauntlet. "Have you given any thought to what Robin will wear, to meet Captain Gordon?"

Bruce stilled, protein shake forgotten in one hand. "No," he admitted, with a twinge of unease. "And a week isn't enough time to make it a convincing suit, even for you."

Alfred patted him on the elbow, probably to thank him for the half-hearted compliment. "Lucky for us, all Robin needs is an image to copy."

Bruce nodded. "Can you—"

Alfred nodded. "I'll work on some sketches, sir. How late do you think you'll be?"

"I'll be home as soon as I can," Bruce promised, somewhat grim. He drained the last of the shake and began some rapid stretches to loosen his muscles after half an hour of standing still. "I've got too much to do. Tell the board—"

"Already done, sir," Alfred said. He picked up the now-empty mug and headed back toward the elevator. "All your meetings prior to the first of the month have been canceled or postponed. It seems you've picked up a stomach bug from so many trips to the hospital. _Very_ contagious."

Bruce felt a little guilty about that—he was still playing catch-up from his leave of absence, and more missed meetings would just put him farther behind—but the interim CEO they'd hired had actually done pretty well over the last three months. Another couple of weeks without Bruce's daily attention wouldn't destroy the company. Besides, it had to learn how to function without him sooner or later, since he wouldn't be here at all this time next year. "Thank you, Alfred."

"Of course, sir," Alfred replied, and left him alone to don the suit and prepare for his patrol.

/~*~/

Either because of the continuing Devil Child rumors, or because Gotham itself could somehow tell that Bruce desperately needed a week of relative calm, the streets were quiet in the days leading up to the meeting with Gordon. Bruce's nightly patrols uncovered nothing more serious than muggings, small-time drug deals, and one armed robbery by a seventeen-year-old kid who had been half talked down by the convenience store attendant before Bruce or the cops even got there. None of the major players were active, as if everyone was holding their breath and waiting to see how the new status quo would fall out, with the Batman mysteriously back from the dead.

Bruce wasn't above taking advantage of it. He patrolled just enough to remind everyone that he existed, and left the real crime solving to the GCPD for a while. He was home by a little after midnight all week, and split his extra free time between training Robin to fight properly and trying to teach it how to act human. Despite his initial skepticism, Robin was picking up martial arts techniques much faster than social graces, probably because Bruce had a pretty good idea of how to train someone to fight, but much less experience in teaching someone behavioral psychology.

Trying to get Robin to pass as a normal child was a fool's gambit; even if he'd had a year instead of a week, Bruce wasn't sure he could manage that. Besides, Gordon already knew about the two men in the hospital, so he wouldn't be expecting a normal child anyway. The trick was to get Robin to convince Gordon that, vigilante training and violent episodes aside, it was a happy, well-adjusted child who didn't need to be placed in therapy or foster-care. The problem was that Bruce had no idea how to do that.

What little Bruce knew of CPS and social services was two decades out of date, and between his family fortune and the high-profile nature of his parents' murders his case had been abnormal in the first place. Most of the people interested in disputing Alfred's custody claim had been more worried about Bruce's trust fund than his mental health, and even the handful of genuinely concerned adults had tread carefully due to the media involvement. There had been periodic mandatory interviews and home visits, especially during the first year or so, but Bruce remembered very little of them beyond serious-faced adults in off-the-rack suits who smiled too much and treated him like he was made of glass. Even without the twenty-year gap, Bruce wasn't sure how much of his own experiences would translate to Robin's situation.

In the end, Bruce just instilled in Robin as much information about mortal life as he could in a week's time, and hoped for the best. It was a surreal sort of cultural crash course, filling in and around the random information Robin had already picked up just from living in the Manor. Robin's vocabulary for mortal-world things increased tenfold in the space of a few days, until it could pass for familiar with everything from modern technology to local sports, at least for short stretches at a time.

The facet that took the most work but yielded the highest dividends was simple body language. Ninety percent of what made Robin seem inhuman was the way it moved, too graceful and controlled, especially for a child. Adding just a bit of heaviness to its walk, or a moment or two of deliberate clumsiness, made a world of difference in making Robin seem _real_. Bruce also encouraged it to fidget, sway, let its attention wander a bit, and swing its legs when it was sitting on something, as these were some of most child-like things it did naturally. Gordon was likely to conclude that it had some form of attention deficit disorder, but at least that was normal and human.

In the meantime, Alfred worked on designing Robin a suit of some kind to wear. They started with a basic copy of Bruce's armor, scaled down and lightened such that a human child could conceivably move in it. Robin didn't much like the boots or gauntlets, but Bruce refused to let it meet Gordon with bare hands and feet, even if the nights were steadily getting warmer. To compromise, Alfred slimmed the shoes and gloves down even further, making adjustments to his sketches that Robin subsequently copied into its glamour. It also refused to wear a cowl or a hood, despite Bruce's explanations about cameras and identities, so they eventually came up with a small, skin-tight mask that covered the area around its eyes and nose, with white lenses hiding its too-bright blue eyes. The mask was impractical—if it had been real, it would need to be glued straight to Robin's skin, because there was no strap or way to hold it in place—and it barely did anything to disguise the shape of Robin's face, but it wasn't as if it actually had a civilian identity to protect anyway.

The final day before the meeting with Gordon, Robin glamoured itself in the complete suit for an afternoon training session, to be sure it would move correctly and feel right in the field. As soon as the air stopped shimmering and Bruce was confronted with a tiny, grinning demon in all black, he turned to Alfred and immediately said, "Less threatening. More … childish."

Alfred, who was watching thoughtfully from over near the Cave computer, nodded. "A smaller cape," he suggested. "And perhaps some color?"

It took the better part of three hours—during which Robin was, surprisingly, focused and cooperative despite the lack of physical stimuli—before they settled on something all three of them liked. It started out red, for the bird Robin was named after. They experimented with more and less black, trying to strike a balance between "works with Batman" and "well-adjusted human child," but they quickly found that red and black was scarcely less intimidating than all black had been. Too much red made it seem like they were taking the Devil Child nickname too seriously, while too little red made it look like the black suit was just bloody in certain places. Neither was the effect they wanted.

Alfred suggested adding another color, and Robin immediately begged for shades of green, reminiscent of the nature it rarely got to experience anymore. Bruce tried to implement a veto, on the grounds that Robin would look like some kind of demented Christmas elf if it dressed in red, green, and black. Alfred diffused the ensuing fight by quickly making a sketch with three colors to offset the black: red and green armor, with a yellow belt and accents that matched the color of the bat-symbol on Bruce's chest. He also shaded the inside surface of the cape with the same yellow, leaving the outside black in case Robin needed to fade into the shadows, and it was enough of a distraction from the primarily red and green scheme to placate Bruce.

"Well?" Robin asked. It spread its shoulders, flaring the cape behind itself, and struck a ridiculous, mock-heroic pose with its chest puffed up and its hands on its hips.

"If we were going for childish, I think we succeeded," Bruce said dryly.

Robin stuck out its chin. When it blinked, the white lenses in its mask blinked, too. "Am I ready to meet Captain Gordon?"

"Let us hope," Alfred said. "Dinner has already been regrettably delayed, I'm afraid. If you'll excuse me, sir?"

Bruce nodded, and Alfred made his way to the elevator. "Let's see how the illusion holds up during movement, now that it's finalized," he added, gesturing toward the training mat.

Robin beat him there, eager and bouncing on its booted toes. "Does this mean we're going out tonight? We can play tag across the buildings, like we did before!"

Bruce shook his head, resigned. "Convince Gordon to leave us alone tomorrow, and we can play tag until dawn. That's a promise." He settled into a combat-ready stance. "Now, show me what you've learned this week."

/~*~/

Captain Gordon showed up to their midnight meeting at 11:48, but Bruce and Robin were already waiting for him on the roof of a rundown shopping center. Bruce had picked the location because it had a dozen different escape routes if things went south and Gordon tried to arrest anybody, even though he was almost positive it wouldn't come to that. The car was hidden in a shadowy niche of the parking garage, one grapple-assisted leap away, and they were less than half a mile from one of Bruce's many emergency bolt-holes around the city. In addition, the maze-like jumble of stores, each with its own roof and loading docks, made for hundreds of potential hiding places. If there was trouble, Bruce was as prepared as he was ever going to be.

As far as Bruce could tell, Gordon had come alone, like they had agreed. It was possible that the entire homicide division was waiting a block away for some kind of signal, but it wasn't likely. Bruce had done a quick sweep around the neighboring streets just a half hour earlier, and hadn't seen anything of the sort. Roadblocks and stakeouts took time to get set up—not that anything the GCPD could assemble was likely to do more than slow him down, unless they were prepared to shoot to kill.

"Here we go," Bruce muttered as he watched Gordon parallel park his sedan along the curb and climb out, several feet below them. "Remember everything we talked about?"

Robin shrugged, making its cape swirl around it. "I got it," it said. "No sweat. It will be a piece of cake."

Bruce felt an urge to roll his eyes. "I knew teaching you slang was a bad idea."

Gordon got up to the roof via the fire escape ladder, pausing as he crested the rim and saw Bruce and Robin waiting on him. He watched them for a moment, and then stepped the rest of the way up and over. He paused a few feet away, a long distance for a casual conversation but close enough that they wouldn't have to shout to hear each other, even over the wind. "Don't you usually wait in a shadow somewhere until I get here, so that you can jump out and try to give me a heart attack?"

Bruce didn't move. His cape made an inky black shadow behind him, but he'd made no other effort to conceal himself. Between the moon, safety lights on the roof itself, and street lights by the parking garage, he was more visible than he'd probably ever been when he wasn't in the middle of a fight. "Not tonight," he said, the gruff quality of his Batman-voice softened just enough so that he sounded human. "Call it a show of good faith."

Gordon hummed noncommittally and turned his attention to Robin, who was standing at Bruce's elbow, one pace to his left and a half-pace back. Bruce watched, more nervous than he wanted to admit, as Gordon examined what he thought was a child. His eyes flicked across the obvious armor, hesitating on the utility belt as if wondering if it held the same kinds of weapons and tricks that were known to be in Batman's, and finally came to rest on the white lenses of Robin's barely-there mask.

"You must be the boy the papers are so interested in," Gordon said.

"Hi!" Robin said back, voice bright. It leaned forward, grabbing a fistful of its cape in each hand in what was either a real nervous tick or an excellent mimicry of one. "You're Captain Gordon. Batman's told me all about you!"

"I'm sure he has," Gordon said. "I'm very happy to finally meet you." His eyes darted across to Bruce briefly before refocusing. "What's your name?"

Robin bit its bottom lip. "I'm not supposed to answer personal questions," it said, sounding as if it was reciting something it had been told often. "It can compromise my identity." It grinned, and Bruce was relieved to see that it was a relatively normal smile, not one of its predatory ones. "But you can call me Robin." With a flourish, it held out a green-gloved hand for Gordon to shake.

Gordon stepped forward to take it, saying, "Hello, Robin. You can call me Jim."

"Hi, Captain Jim," Robin said. It dropped Gordon's hand and half-stepped backward in a show of shyness, looking for a moment as if it might duck behind Bruce's cape.

"How old are you?" Gordon asked.

"Nine," Robin answered, which was the oldest that Bruce and Alfred had agreed that Gordon would believe.

"Nine!" Gordon smiled warmly down at it. "I have a daughter about your age. She just turned ten." He crouched, putting his face more-or-less at Robin's eye-level. "Where are your parents?" he asked quietly. "Do they know that you're out here with Batman?"

Robin shook its head. "I don't have parents," it said, with the careless ease of a child stating an ugly truth that doesn't register as such, because it's all they've ever known. "Batman takes care of me now."

Bruce was already motionless, but for a moment he forgot to breathe. The first half of that was the story they'd agreed to use—if Gordon thought he might have a shot at talking to an adult who was responsible for Robin's welfare, there'd be no stopping him from trying to track them down and warn them about what Batman was doing to their child—but the second part blindsided him.

Gordon was surprised, too. It showed in the way he leaned back slightly, eyes widening. "I see," he said. "That's awfully nice of him. How did you meet?"

Bruce cleared his throat. "It was—"

"I'd like to hear Robin's answer," Gordon said immediately, overriding Bruce. "If you can't let him speak for himself, maybe you shouldn't be here while I talk to him."

"I'm not leaving him alone with you," Bruce said. He hadn't given Robin an explicit Command not to hurt Gordon, and though he trusted it to behave—up to a point—he wasn't about to risk Gordon's life on the shaky morals he'd managed to drill into its head. So far, Bruce's disapproval seemed to be a viable deterrent, and he had hammered home the point that hurting people without a good reason wasn't acceptable, but there was no telling what Robin might do if it felt genuinely threatened. "You've made it clear you don't trust me with him. I won't risk you trying to spirit him away in a squad car while I'm gone." _That_ wouldn't end well for anyone, Gordon least of all.

"Fair enough," Gordon said after a moment. "But you have to let him talk," he added, stern. "I want to hear what _he_ thinks, not what you want him to tell me."

Bruce raised his hands, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. He even took a few steps back, metaphorically removing himself from the discussion.

Gordon switched positions, letting his crouch collapse until he was sitting on the concrete roof with his legs crossed in front of him. He winced slightly as his knee creaked, but otherwise made no complaint about the rough surface or the chill that had to be creeping through his pants. He patted the cement next to him and smiled at Robin. "Come on," he said. "I won't bite. I just want to have a little chat before Batman takes you home."

"Okay," Robin said, and dropped down onto the roof in front of Gordon. It flared its cape as it did so, so that it didn't sit on it. The stiff fabric settled around its arms, but it threw it back so that the black outer surface didn't hide the bright colors on its chest. "What did you want to ask me?"

"You said that Batman takes care of you now," Gordon said. He kept his hands folded in his lap, carefully non-threatening. Bruce started to wonder if the GCPD gave its officers counselor training, or if Jim Gordon was just naturally good at being calm, comforting, and approachable to nervous or traumatized kids. "Who was taking care of you before?"

"Nobody," Robin said, with a little shrug. "I always took care of myself."

Gordon absorbed this for a moment, probably imagining some nightmare scenario of Robin abandoned and starving on a street-corner. "Well, I'm glad Batman found you. Can you tell me how that happened?"

Robin nodded. "He was hurt," it said. "It wasn't immediately dangerous or anything, but he needed my help, so I helped him." It glanced at Bruce, still smiling. "He tried to send me away, afterward, until he figured out that I didn't have anywhere else I could go."

"And he took you home with him?" Gordon asked, sounding skeptical. "Just like that?"

"Yep," Robin said, snapping his lips on the _p._ "I got a guest bedroom all to myself, and new clothes to wear, and all kinds of food to pick from!" It leaned forward, as if about to impart a great secret. "Sometimes, I can have hot chocolate after dinner."

"I like hot chocolate, too," Gordon said. "Especially on cold nights. The kind with the little marshmallows on top is the best."

Robin turned to look at Bruce, eyes wide. "Marshmallows?" It sounded betrayed.

"I'll make a note," Bruce said.

Over the next twenty minutes, Gordon coaxed Robin into talking about everything from its best subject in school—a not-so-subtle way to be sure Bruce was sending it to school at all, presumably—to its sleeping habits. Robin had an answer for everything, including a couple of things Bruce hadn't thought to prepare it for, like asking where it would want to go on a vacation (the mountains, apparently, especially if there would be snow).

The most dangerous part was probably when Gordon began to ask about Robin's training. As instructed, Robin was careful to imply that Bruce had been teaching it for months instead of just a few days, without ever coming right out and saying so. It talked about learning gymnastics and martial arts, along with basic fight strategy and things like how to rapidly scan a room and remember every item inside, or how to assess threat levels when faced with multiple enemies. It complained with genuine frustration at being asked to learn meditation and—per Bruce's suggestion—at being denied the opportunity to train with real weapons.

"Batman says I'm not ready yet," Robin added, cupping one hand around its mouth as if trying to keep Bruce from hearing, even though it was speaking at a relatively normal volume. "He says I might not be ready for a really long time, even though I'm loads better than I used to be."

"Weapons are very dangerous," Gordon said. "I'm sure he just doesn't want you getting hurt." He paused for a moment, obviously uncomfortable but determined to ask the next logical question. "Have you ever been hurt, when you're training?"

Robin hesitated, but it was brief enough that Bruce thought Gordon might not have noticed. "Learning to fight involves, well, _fighting_ ," it said. Bruce recognized his own words from earlier in the week, spoken with almost the same intonation. "If you don't at least pick up some bruises or sore muscles here and there, you're not working hard enough."

Bruce could feel Gordon's attention sharpening, his cop instincts zeroing in. "Robin," he said, gentler than any words he'd spoken so far. "Has Batman ever hurt you?"

Robin fidgeted on the ground, casting a quick, almost furtive glance to where Bruce was standing a few feet away.

"Don't worry about him," Gordon said quickly. "You're talking to me. He told you to tell me the truth, didn't he?"

"Yes," Robin said, clearly reluctant.

"Has Batman ever hurt you?"

Bruce held his breath.

"Yes," Robin repeated.

Gordon visibly tensed. "Can you tell me when that happened?"

"It was during the fight, when those bad guys almost killed him." Robin conspicuously rubbed at one arm, as if soothing an old bruise. "I wasn't supposed to get involved, because I'm not ready yet, but I got scared Batman was going to die if I didn't help him. Only I went too far, and he had to stop me before I hurt them any worse."

Gordon blinked. "He … what, he grabbed you by the arm? Dragged you away?"

 _I gave it a Command,_ Bruce thought, _because that was the only way I could stop it._

"He didn't _mean_ to hurt me," Robin said, which wasn't a confirmation or denial of Gordon's assumption. "He promised he wouldn't, and I believe him. He just had to get my attention, before I messed up and crossed the line that we aren't supposed to cross."

"And what line is that?" Gordon asked, sounding wary.

Robin was suddenly solemn. "We do not kill," it said, repeating Bruce's words from the burned-out library. "Ever."

Gordon paled. "You were going to _kill_ those men? The ones you put in the hospital?"

"Maybe." Robin folded in on itself, pulling its knees up to its chest and circling them with its arms. "I got scared," it repeated. "I know better, now. It won't happen again." It hesitated, daring after a moment to lift its head and meet Gordon's eyes. "I'm sorry."

"You should be," Gordon said, firm but still gentle. "That was a very serious thing you did."

Bruce stepped forward. "He said he was sorry, Gordon," he interjected. "I've impressed upon him the need for restraint, in the future. He's learned his lesson."

"I hope so," Gordon said. He stared at Robin for another moment or two, finally saying, "Stay here for a minute. I need to talk to Batman. We'll just be a few feet away, okay?"

"Okay," Robin said, still glum.

Gordon got to his feet and walked past Bruce, only stopping when he reached what he probably thought was a safe distance away from Robin's ears. Bruce knew that nowhere on the roof would be far enough away to be out of Robin's hearing range, but he humored Gordon anyway, following him to the edge of the roof.

"What were you thinking?" Gordon hissed when Bruce reached him, half under his breath. "You can't just bring home an orphaned kid like you would a stray cat you found in a dumpster!"

"Would you rather I have left him where he was?" Bruce asked.

"Of course not," Gordon said quickly. "But there's a system in place for kids like him—homes, foster-parents who are trained to deal with the things he's been through. He deserves a normal home, and parents who will help stabilize him, not turn him into a weapon!"

Bruce played the only card he had left, hoping it would be enough. "He's not a normal child," he said flatly. "Putting him in the system and trying to fit him with a normal family would be a disaster."

"You can't know that."

"You saw what he did to those two drug dealers," Bruce pointed out. "You want to put him in a regular orphanage, or with a set of oblivious foster parents, and see what happens the first time he throws a temper tantrum? Those kinds of people aren't capable of handling him, not like I am. He's less dangerous, with me."

"He's just a kid," Gordon snapped.

Bruce's lips made a thin, white line. "You think that means he's innocent? There's a darkness in him, Gordon. He needs to learn to control it."

"And whose fault is that?" Gordon demanded.

"Not mine," Bruce replied. "If you think I had to teach Robin about fear, disappointment, or anger, you're either hopelessly naive or you've forgotten what childhood was really like."

"Maybe," Gordon allowed. "But even in Gotham, most kids don't run around in Kevlar getting into fights with drug dealers."

"I didn't say it was a perfect solution," Bruce admitted. "I just said that he's better off with me than he would be anywhere else."

Gordon watched him for a long moment, weighing something. "You really believe that," he said softly. "Tell me why."

"Because," Bruce said, "maybe I understand a little bit about having darkness inside you."

Gordon apparently didn't have an answer for that. He rubbed both hands up and down his face. "Heaven help me, I think I believe you. Maybe if I hadn't gone to the hospital to interview those two men, or talked to the one who ran away …" He sighed. "Promise me that you'll do whatever you can to give him a normal life, with school and friends and Saturday morning cartoons."

Bruce nodded.

"All right," Gordon said. "I'll go to bat for you with CPS, on a conditional basis." His face and voice hardened. "But I'm going to have one of these little chats with him every so often, and if I ever hear anything I don't like, I reserve the right to change my mind."

Bruce nodded again. "I'd expect no less."

"Keep him safe," Gordon ordered. "If he gets hurt running around with you, or God forbid, _killed_ , then his blood is going to be on my hands as much as yours, now."

 _Good thing it_ _'_ _s immortal, then_ , Bruce thought. "I will," he said.

Before Gordon left, he went back to Robin and thanked it for talking to him, leaving it with a business card. "You can call me anytime, if you ever need to talk," he told it.

"Okay," Robin said, cradling the little paper rectangle like it was precious. "Goodnight, Captain Jim."

"Goodnight, Robin," Gordon answered. He glanced at Bruce and added, "I'll be in touch."

Robin waited more-or-less patiently until Gordon was all the way back down the fire-escape ladder, and then turned to Bruce. "How did I do?" it asked, bouncing in place.

It probably could have gone a little better, but Bruce was more relieved than anything. For better or worse, they'd gotten Gordon to back off and trust them, at least for now.

"I think," he said, mock-seriously, "that I owe you a game of tag." He tapped his radio to activate it and said, "It seems Gordon's on our side. Don't expect us home until dawn."

 _Have fun, sir,_ Alfred's voice replied in his ear.

"Well?" Bruce asked, tapping the radio back to silent mode.

Robin grinned. "Catch me before sunrise," it challenged, "and you win."

"You're on."

/~*~/


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

Bruce landed with impossibly light feet on the gargoyle he'd chosen to be his vantage point, which jutted out from the east wall of the old bank, just below its second-story windows. It was a move he wouldn't have dared, pre-Robin—the statue was narrow enough that his margin of error was next to nothing, and the rain earlier had left the stone with a thin patina of moisture that made it treacherous footing—but now he didn't even need his grapple as an anchor or a safety-line. He had just jumped, from the lip of the roof across the small alley between buildings, using his cape to direct his fall until he landed on his chosen gargoyle, without even a slap of his boots on the wet stone.

He crouched, draping his cape around himself until he was nothing more than a patch of darkness amongst the building's textured shadows. He found himself newly appreciative of Gotham's odd penchant for Gothic architecture; it might have been ugly at its best, and disturbing at its worst, but it did give him a thousand new handholds and perches to use. From here, he could see both the street directly below—where the back entrance was—and into the small lobby inside, through the large pane of glass that made up the high windows. As long as he was motionless, even if someone happened to notice him on the windowsill he would appear to be nothing more than another stone guardian.

With that in mind, Bruce kept his motions slow and minute as he flicked his radio to active, determined not to draw attention to himself. Gargoyles, as a rule, didn't move. "Robin?" he said, barely a whisper, even though he was too far away to be overheard by the two men standing on the street below, unless he yelled. "I tracked them to the bank on Wilmont Avenue. Are you in position?"

He waited for a solid ten seconds, but there was no response. Even if Robin had been in mid-leap, that should have given it time to land and flick on its radio. Was it ignoring him? Because they'd _talked_ about that, about the importance of answering in the field, even when it was inconvenient or poorly-timed, so that a real emergency would register as trouble and not simply Robin's short attention span at work.

"Robin," he said again, marginally louder this time, even though he knew from previous tests that the microphones were sensitive enough to pick up his whispers. "Did you lose them, or are you ready to go in?"

There was only silence on the radio. Quickly, still moving as little as possible within the enveloping canopy of his cape, Bruce rechecked his equipment—radio flipped to active, microphone registering his voice, speaker functioning—and even briefly switched channels to check in with Alfred, just to be sure his signal was getting through. Everything came back green.

"Robin?" His tone had an edge to it, now. "Answer me."

More silence. Bruce gathered his muscles for a jump, ready to scale the side of the building and retrace their route until he reached the point where he had lost sight of Robin. What could have possibly happened in the space of half a mile that would prevent it from responding to its radio? Even if it had gotten distracted or turned around, and lost track of Bruce or the suspicious van they'd been following, it wasn't like it could have gotten that far away. The bond would pull it steadily but surely toward Bruce if they got separated, so it was almost impossible for it to get lost. Something must have happened.

The moment before Bruce moved, his radio gave a friendly little clicking sound.

 _"Oops,"_ Robin's voice said, reedy and unnaturally flat over the mechanical speaker. _"I was talking to you, but I forgot to push the button that lets you hear me."_

Bruce relaxed, as much as he could while balancing on a stone outcropping two stories in the air. "I thought you were finally getting the hang of the radio," he said, mildly chastising.

 _"I was,"_ Robin said. Bruce didn't need to be able to see it to know it was scowling at him; he could hear it in its voice. _"I mean, I am. I've got it now."_

"Always check it before we leave the Cave," Bruce recited. "Tap to activate the microphone. One click for an open channel, two clicks to acknowledge an order, and—"

 _"And three for 'I'm in trouble but I can't talk because someone's close enough to hear me,'"_ Robin interrupted, speaking swiftly. _"I know. Basic radio protocol. I've had this vigilante thing down for weeks. I know what I'm doing!"_

Bruce waited. Silently, he raised his eyebrows, safely hidden by his cowl.

 _"I can feel you frowning, you know,"_ Robin said, put-upon. _"That was_ ** _one_** _time, I said I was sorry, and anyway it_ _'s not like you can't swim, even in that monstrosity you call a suit. Are you ever going to let me forget it?"_

The armor had smelled like briny, sewage-tainted water for _days_ , despite Alfred's best efforts, and the delicate electronics had all needed to be stripped out and replaced. Even so, Bruce wasn't sure which had upset him more—the fact that Robin had carelessly knocked him into the harbor in the middle of a skirmish, or the fact that it had laughed so hard that it couldn't stay upright at the sight of a wet, bedraggled Batman climbing back up onto the pier a few moments later. Robin _had_ apologized, once it could breathe enough to manage words, but its wicked grin had rather undercut the sentiment.

In any case, Bruce wasn't inclined to let it off the hook just yet. If it had been a civilian, rather than a fully-armored and binding-enhanced Batman, who had accidentally taken the brunt of Robin's poorly-timed blow, there would have been a dead body to pull from the harbor instead. Robin had learned its lesson about intentional harm, and the acceptable levels thereof; it was having a harder time with accidental or collateral damage. Carelessness was just as dangerous as malice, if somewhat easier to forgive in a creature whose nature was so inherently child-like. That didn't mean it didn't need to learn to curb it, as soon as possible.

"If we let ourselves forget our mistakes—" Bruce began.

 _"Then we will end up repeating them,"_ Robin said along with him, in a pseudo-deep mockery of Bruce's Batman-voice. _"At this point, I can give your lectures better than you can."_ It sighed, which it was doing more and more often these days. It was a habit that Bruce was encouraging, even at home; it wouldn't do for it to let its human facade slip and hiss like an ill-tempered cat in front of a cop or a victim _._ _"Can we fight the bad guys now? Or do you want to be disapproving at me some more?"_

Bruce's lips twitched, and he hoped the small smile wasn't audible in his voice. "Fine," he said. "Give me the breakdown."

 _"Is that really necessary? You're the one with the better vantage—"_

"If you know my lectures so well, go ahead and give yourself the one about arguing with a direct order in the field when you don't have a _very_ good reason to do so."

There was another sigh, but when it spoke again its voice was clear, confident, and professional. _"Six targets total. Two on the street, watching the back door. One in the rear lobby, three headed for the vault entrance. They'll be through the door in another forty seconds or so. Building security's disabled, including cameras and alarms, but that by itself will send up red flags. Estimated response time for the security company is maybe half an hour, this time of night, for something that looks like a technical glitch or a mechanical failure."_

"Good," Bruce said. "Threat level?"

 _"Low,"_ Robin said instantly. _"The two on the street look like muscle, but they're too nervous to be real professionals, and they're not armed well enough to make up the difference. They're here to carry money out, not fight. Lobby lady is tech support, judging by her gear. I don't even think she's carrying a gun. Not to mention two of the three by the vault look like civilians to me. One of them is an employee, I bet—the inside man. The only halfway dangerous one is the boss, and only because this isn't his first time around the block."_

"Prison tattoo, knuckles on his left hand," Bruce agreed. "Good catch. You're down to twenty seconds until they reach the vault. What's your entry point?"

 _"Skylight,"_ Robin said. It was still answering quickly and efficiently, so Bruce didn't call it on the smugness that he could hear underneath. _"Disable the lobby one before she can call for help, then run for the vault. Smoke pellet for cover, go for the weapon first. Maybe lock them inside the vault, if they get the door open? That could be fun. They won't suffocate before the security company gets here to check it out. Probably."_

Bruce huffed an involuntary chuckle. "And the muscle on the street, watching the door?"

 _"I didn't want to steal all the fun. Imagine how bored you'd be."_

"How considerate of you," Bruce said, deadpan.

 _"They're almost at the vault. Can I go?"_

Bruce felt the urge to shake his head, and only didn't because he was still impersonating a gargoyle. Robin's voice had lost all pretense of calm professionalism, becoming instead an excited little-boy whine that immediately made him picture it bouncing on its toes with wide, eager eyes. "Go on," he said, warmly indulgent. "I'll be inside once these two are secured."

Robin, of course, clicked its radio twice instead of answering verbally, just to be a little brat. Luckily, the two-story fall after he stepped off the gargoyle gave Bruce enough time to thoroughly roll his eyes.

/~*~/

It was less than thirty seconds later when Bruce swept through the rear lobby, adding two more unconscious and zip-tied bodies to the one Robin had left propped up against a wall when it came through earlier. He headed immediately for the corridor that led to the vault, following the entwined sounds of a single gunshot and Robin's gleeful, mocking giggle.

Bruce had tried to break it of that habit—the eerie laughter reminded him, uneasily, of Joker victims—but Robin almost always forgot and did it anyway. By this point, an echoing giggle could scare Gotham's criminals almost as much as the swish of a black cape in the shadows, and it worked well as a distraction tactic. For better or worse, it had become Robin's signature, and Bruce had eventually given up.

He expected to hear a second peal of creepy, high-pitched laughter once Robin had brought down the three would-be-thieves, but instead he heard the voice of a male adult, hoarse with adrenaline and desperation, screaming, "Don't you move! You stay right there—stay where I can see you!"

Over the radio, there was a series of three rapid clicks.

Bruce broke into a run.

The vault door was open, swung to perhaps a sixty degree angle with the wall, with a low cloud of smoke trailing out and upward from Robin's entrance. Bruce used the heavy metal door for cover as he approached, slipping a small mirror from his utility belt to see around the door's edge and into the vault itself. The smoke was already clearing, revealing Robin standing closest to the door and facing the three thieves further inside.

Or, Bruce corrected as he took in the scene, the one thief, the one hostage, and the one unwilling accomplice.

Robin had guessed correctly; the woman must have been a bank employee who had gotten them inside and through the vault door, as she was obviously no thief. She was visibly shaken, standing off to the side with tear streaks on her cheeks and a tremor in her limbs. She wasn't armed, and she had her hands lifted as if she wanted to reach for the two men in front of her. "No, no, please," she was babbling. "Don't hurt him!"

The boss stood at the third point of the roughly-equilateral triangle formed by the vault's occupants, along with the final member of the thieving crew, a much younger man who was obviously his hostage. Now that Bruce was close enough to make out faces, he placed the kid at fifteen or sixteen at most, tall but thin, with all the awkwardness of adolescence. The boss had him trapped against his chest, holding a serrated combat knife at the boy's throat from behind. It wasn't a secure grip, but the kid was too terrified to try to slip free. With his free hand, the boss was aiming a small hand-gun at Robin's center of mass.

The gun by itself wouldn't have made Robin pause. They'd never explicitly tested it, but they were reasonably confident that a bullet wouldn't do much more than make Robin mad, at worst knocking it down if the caliber were high enough to transfer significant momentum. The iron content of modern bullets was too low to present a real threat, and even pure iron—what Robin uneasily referred to as _cold iron—w_ ouldn't kill it so long as it was bound to Bruce. At most, a gun was a threat of momentary pain and inconvenience.

Knowing that, Bruce would have expected Robin to ignore the gun and attack anyway. If it had moved fast enough, without hesitating, it might have reached the boss fast enough to prevent him from slicing open the kid's throat. But it _had_ hesitated, and as a result it had lost its window of opportunity. Attacking now would almost certainly get the boy killed, and Robin obviously knew it. It had even asked for help, with the three radio clicks, rather than make the wrong decision on its own, and risk putting a civilian in unnecessary jeopardy.

Bruce felt a brief surge of something very much like pride. Perhaps Robin was learning about carelessness and consequences after all.

"On three," Bruce whispered, low enough that no one but Robin could hear him. "Go for the knife; get it away from the kid."

On the other side of the vault door, Robin slowly raised its hands in the universal signal for surrender, and Bruce's radio clicked softly two times in acknowledgment. It had disguised the motion so well that even Bruce, who was watching for it, didn't see its clever fingers tap the radio on its collar on their way up.

"One," Bruce whispered.

The woman continued to babble pleas for the boy's safety—was it her son, perhaps, or a younger brother?—while the boss began to edge ever-so-slightly toward the exit, twitching the gun to indicate that he wanted Robin to move to the side. He was obviously worried, but he was holding himself together so far, which boded well for their chances of rescuing the hostage. There was nothing more dangerous than an armed thug who began to panic and make poor decisions.

"Two."

Bruce held the mirror steady with one hand, but pulled out a stylized bat-shaped throwing star with the other. In the vault, Robin's hands crept higher as it began to step, exaggeratedly careful and slow, to the left.

"Three," Bruce said

Before the word was even out, he had moved, pivoting around the edge of the door just enough to get a clean shot. He flipped the throwing star in something halfway between an underhand toss and a side-arm pitch. The small projectile embedded itself in the boss's leg, just above the knee, which was one of the only places the hostage's body didn't shield properly.

Robin leapt as soon as Bruce moved, and by the time the boss jerked in surprise and pain from the impact, it was already on him. All three of them—boss, hostage, and Robin—went down in a heap. The gun clattered across the floor, skidding toward a wall with a round still in the chamber. The woman screamed something that sounded like it might have been a name, and she didn't hesitate for a moment as she lunged for the sprawl of bodies. She grabbed the boy by the lower leg and physically dragged him clear, leaving Robin and a profusely-bleeding boss to fight it out on the floor.

Bruce went for the gun first, rapidly disassembling it. Once all the bullets were tinkling around loose on the floor, he could breathe again. "Robin?" he called.

"I got him," Robin said, nonchalant. "You need him awake to talk?"

"Not particularly," Bruce said. He didn't like people who took hostages, especially kids. "But bandage that leg. I don't want him bleeding out before the cops show up."

Robin nodded. It was sitting perched on the man's chest, pinning the wrist of his knife hand to the ground with one casually placed boot. It shouldn't have worked—no matter how strong Robin was, its _weight_ shouldn't have been enough to pin someone three times its size—but Bruce had stopped questioning such things weeks ago. A moment later, the man went limp, victim of one of Robin's capsules of knockout gas. Only then did it stand up, roll the non-responsive man over onto his side, and reach for the pressure bandages in its belt.

Bruce turned to the woman and boy. They were huddled on the floor against the vault's side wall, up against the lowest row of safety-deposit boxes. The kid had his head in the woman's lap, and she was running her hands across him—his face, his hair, his shoulders, his chest—checking him for injuries. There was no blood on his neck; Robin had been fast enough. Both of them were shaking and crying, coming down from too much adrenaline.

Bruce knelt, close enough to speak gently, not so close that he was looming over them. "Are you all right?" he asked.

The teenager gulped once, on the verge of hyperventilating and trying to control it, but nodded. "I'm—I'm okay," he said, in a strained voice. "I think I'm okay." He sounded like he was trying to reassure himself of that fact.

The woman continued to run her hands across him, less clinically now and more as a soothing gesture. "You're all right," she said, nodding. "You're going to be all right. It's over, now."

Somewhere behind them, Robin was speaking quietly into its radio, giving Alfred the address and body-count to relay to the G.C.P.D.

"The cops will be here soon, with some paramedics," Bruce said, as soothingly as he could. "Just stay here and wait for them."

The woman glanced up, taking her eyes off the boy for the first time. "They'll arrest me, won't they?" she asked. There were quiet tears streaming down her cheeks still, but her voice was steady. "I let them in, opened the vault …"

Bruce didn't try to contradict her. At the very least, she was guilty of aiding and abetting, for not calling the police the moment she realized someone was trying to coerce her. Give her a sympathetic jury, and a judge with kids of his or her own, and she'd get off with probation or community service. She'd never work in a bank again, but there were worse fates.

She wiped at her wet cheeks. "I'm not sorry," she said, her voice suddenly fierce. "Emil is alive. That's all that matters." She shook her head. "I'd do it again, in a heartbeat. It's not even a choice."

Robin came to stand beside him, just a hair shorter than Bruce in his crouch. "We're all good here," it said, businesslike. "Cops on their way. Three minutes."

The woman shifted up to her knees, squeezing the boy's shoulder briefly before letting him go. She shuffled forward on the cold vault tiles, lifting her arms. Bruce realized what she was about to do a second before she did it, but he didn't have time to try to stop her or shout a warning. Instead, he could only watch, tense, as she pulled Robin into a tight hug.

Robin froze, forgoing its mortal act and going perfectly, inhumanly still.

Bruce felt his heart threatening to climb up his throat. With the exception of a handshake here and there, like Bruce had taught it, had Robin _ever_ been touched outside of a fight? What if it took the hug as a threat, an attack of some kind? It had gotten pretty good at not inflicting permanent harm unless absolutely necessary, but what if it panicked? Most hostiles never got that close to it. One swift twist with those impossibly strong, slender hands, and the woman would be dead before her body hit the floor.

"Thank you," the woman whispered, her chin resting on Robin's bony, armored shoulder. "That was very brave, what you did. You saved Emil's life."

Robin glanced at Bruce, eyes wide, but it didn't attack. Bruce hastily mouthed the words: _Be. Still._

"It's okay," Robin said. It kept its arms by its sides, awkwardly just standing there while the woman hugged him. That might raise some unfortunate questions, but it was better than the alternative. "I mean, you're welcome?"

The woman laughed, a brief moment on the verge of hysteria as the last of her adrenaline began to dissipate, replaced by giddy relief. She pulled back, holding Robin's shoulders at arm's length. It remained still, calmly meeting her gaze.

"You're a very special little boy," she said quietly. "Batman's lucky to have you."

That made Robin grin, bright and eager, making it look briefly harmless. "Well, _somebody_ has to keep him out of trouble."

In the distance, Bruce began to hear the sirens approaching. Even accounting for the extended range of his hearing, thanks to Robin's powers, they didn't have long before company arrived."We need to go," he said.

The woman nodded. She released Robin. "Go," she said. "Be safe."

"Goodbye," Robin said immediately, and bounced out of the vault at a speed that was only just believable as human.

The woman glanced at Bruce one more time. "Thank you," she added.

Bruce hesitated. "Good luck," he said gruffly. "Take care of your boy."

He was already turned around, walking through the vault door, when he heard her quiet response.

"You, too."

/~*~/

Robin was waiting for him on the roof of a building two blocks away, close enough to see and hear the cops entering the bank, but far enough away not to be spotted.

"What," it hissed at him as soon as he landed on the roof, "was _that_?" It was pacing, rubbing at its arms as if to wipe away the woman's touch.

Bruce clipped his grapple back to his belt and hesitated, searching for the right words. "It's called a hug," he said. Of all the mortal-world things he had explained so far this summer, this was somehow the hardest. "In her case, it was an expression of gratitude and affection."

Robin's forehead scrunched up as its eyes narrowed. "She said 'thank you,'" it pointed out. "Why did she have to do something else, too?"

Bruce sighed. "People—humans—sometimes need to express things physically. Words aren't always enough, especially if our emotions are running strongly, and she'd just been through something traumatic."

Robin scoffed, kicking at loose debris on the roof as it continued to pace. "The knife wasn't at _her_ throat," it said, dismissive.

"No," Bruce said. "But sometimes danger to ourselves is actually easier to handle than danger to the people around us."

Robin paused, looking at Bruce as if he were insane. "That makes no sense," it said flatly.

Bruce flared his cape out of the way and went to sit down on the lip of the roof, one eye on the proceedings at the bank two blocks over, just in case. "Do you remember how it felt, that night two months ago, when I'd been shot and you came back to rescue me? When you thought I was going to die?"

Robin cocked its head. "They were trying to take you from me," it said, a hint of anger under its words. It came over and jumped down with its careless grace to sit next to him, tiny green boots swinging heedlessly back and forth over a three-story drop. "No one is going to take you away from me. You're _mine._ "

Bruce probably should have been a lot more worried about that than he was. "Well, the woman didn't want to lose that boy, whoever he was. When he was in danger, she was worried and scared."

"So, when I tackled the bad guy …"

"You saved the person she cared about," Bruce agreed. "And all those strong emotions—fear and worry—turned into relief and gratitude. She needed to let them out, and you were the one most directly responsible for the kid's safety."

Robin hummed thoughtfully. "But I didn't _mean_ to save him. I was just stopping a bad guy from robbing a bank. He got caught in the middle."

Bruce thought for a moment, about intentions and consequences and morality, and how to make Robin understand. "Why did we follow them to the bank in the first place?" he asked. "Why do we go out every night and risk being hurt, just so that we can keep the bad guys from doing bad things?"

Robin stared up at him, as if that might be a trick question. "Because … we can? And it's fun!"

Bruce shook his head. Maybe this was the wrong track. He was never quite sure how much of his ethics lessons Robin actually absorbed, rather than simply mimicking in order to trick Captain Gordon during their little monthly sanity-check conversations.

"We call them 'bad guys,' right?" Bruce asked, trying a different approach. "Why do we do that?"

"Because we're the good guys."

"Well, what _makes_ us the good guys?"

Robin shrugged. "We stop the bad guys."

"That's circular logic," Bruce said, stern. "You can do better than that."

Robin groaned and fell back flat onto the roof, staring up at the night sky. There had been an afternoon thunderstorm, earlier, and the clouds were still too thick to see the stars. Although sometimes Bruce was convinced that Robin wasn't looking at the same sky he was, anyway. "Mortal foolishness," it muttered. "Why does it matter?"

Bruce hesitated, thoughtful. "It doesn't, actually," he admitted. "You've done well following the rules even without understanding them, at least after that first … incident."

"That doesn't count," Robin said immediately. "I didn't know the rules, then. That wasn't my fault."

Bruce held up his hands, metaphorically surrendering that argument. "Maybe following the rules is good enough," he said. "Maybe you don't have to understand the reasoning behind them."

Robin glanced over at him. It blinked once, exaggerated by the way the white lenses in its mask blinked, too. Bruce really should talk to it about changing that part of its glamour; it was unnerving. "The rules have … reasons?" it asked. It cocked its head. "They aren't just arbitrary?"

Bruce half-smiled. "Did you really think they were?"

Robin shrugged, looking upward again. "I don't know," it said, almost sullen. "You hold the binding, you make the rules. They don't have to make sense." It folded its hands behind its head, staring up at the empty black sky. "Half the things in this world don't."

"Do I strike you as someone who does things without reason?"

Robin sighed, pushing itself back up into a seated position. "Do you do _anything_ except ask questions?"

"Well," Bruce said. He leaned over, just enough to bump companionably into Robin's shoulder. If victims were going to be touching Robin in the field, Bruce should try to acclimate it to normal, non-violent human contact, sooner rather than later. "Occasionally I give lectures. Or so I've heard, albeit from a disreputable source."

Robin sighed again and bounced up to its feet. "I'm bored," it announced. "Can we race back to the car? We still have half a patrol to do!"

Two blocks away, red and blue emergency lights illuminated a small crowd milling around the bank entrance. Even from this distance, with his enhanced eyes Bruce could make out the figures of the thieving crew, unconscious and being carefully strapped to ambulance stretchers. The woman and the boy were giving statements to separate pairs of police. The woman was handcuffed, and a paramedic was hovering near the kid, taking his blood pressure. There was nothing left for Bruce to do, here.

"One condition," Bruce said. He stood upright, settling his cape around him in the muggy summer darkness. "I get to ask one more question, and you spend the next few days thinking about it. Deal?"

Robin looked wary, but it slowly nodded.

"When you first came here," Bruce said, "you were afraid that I was going to hurt you. You were upset about the binding because you were scared I was going to abuse the power it gave me."

"I remember," Robin said, quietly.

"But I didn't," Bruce said. "Or at least, I've tried not to."

Robin blinked. "You promised you wouldn't," it said.

"Why?" Bruce asked, looking it in the eye. "Why did I promise you that?"

It fidgeted. "I don't know."

Bruce nodded. "Think about it," he said, and stepped off the roof.

"Hey! No fair! You didn't say go!"

/~*~/

"Empathy," Bruce mused the next day, leaning back into the soft leather of his seat. "That's the missing piece, Alfred."

"Missing piece, sir?" Alfred asked from the driver's seat, as the car pulled up to a red light.

Bruce flipped the folder in his lap closed; he already had the contract more-or-less memorized, and they were almost to the office, anyway. "Robin," he clarified. "It fundamentally doesn't care, not because of cynicism or apathy, but because it literally _can_ _'t_. It doesn't have any empathy."

The light turned green, and Alfred began to accelerate. "It fights by your side. It even protects you," he pointed out. "So it must care, at least a little."

Bruce shook his head. "I don't think that's it," he said. He tapped the folder—a simple manila one, this time; no need for twine-and-buttons in his daytime life—against one thigh. "It sees the mission as an opportunity for fun. If I die, that goes away."

In the back of his head, Robin's voice whispered, _No one is going to take you away from me. You_ _'re_ ** _mine_**.

"It's attention span is rather limited, sir," Alfred said. The turn-signal began to click a steady warning as the car smoothly switched lanes. "What happens when it gets bored with this game?"

"I don't know," Bruce admitted. "That's why I'm trying to teach it the reason behind the mission _._ If I can get it to care, to understand _why_ we do what we do …"

Alfred pulled the car to a gentle stop next to the curb, and then met Bruce's eyes via the rear-view mirror. "You're planning ahead," he observed. "What are you thinking?"

"What if I can convince it that the mission is valuable, not because it's fun, but because of the people we help?" Bruce leaned forward, excited. "What if I can get it to _care_?"

"Then maybe it will choose not to kill you?" Alfred guessed.

"Well, that would be nice," Bruce said, "assuming that it even _has_ a choice. But even if it kills me, maybe I can convince it to carry on without me."

Alfred turned, looking at him from between the two front seats. "You're training it to be your replacement?"

"Why not?" Bruce asked. "It's certainly capable. I've taught it _how_ to fight—what if I can teach it _why_ to fight, as well?" He was almost smiling, now. "It's perfect, Alfred. It can't be killed, it never gets tired, it doesn't have a regular life to take up its time and energy … It's a better guardian for Gotham than I could ever be."

"Until it gets bored," Alfred said flatly, "and decides to burn it to the ground, instead."

"Empathy, Alfred," Bruce repeated. He grabbed his cane from where it was laying across the back seat and turned toward the car door, just as someone from the lobby was approaching to open it for him. "I have to find a way to teach it empathy. _Then_ I can teach it to care about the city."

"Good luck, sir," Alfred said quietly.

The door opened, and Bruce graciously accepted a hand up from one of the assistants who had flocked around the car.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Wayne," one of them said, ensconcing himself at Bruce's elbow, ostensibly to help steady Bruce as he leaned on his cane. He even managed not to sound too surprised when he added, "You're right on time, sir. Your one-o-clock has just arrived."

The three assistants rattled off other important information at him, sometimes talking over each other, as they made their way from the curb to the Wayne Enterprises main lobby. They used to have these rapid-fire, everyday emergency briefings in his office after he arrived, but now that the walk from the car to the executive elevator took ten minutes on a good day, they had switched to this. Bruce actually preferred it this way; the sense of motion, even when he was pretending to be in pain, helped him to focus.

"Tell Mr. Inayushi that our position hasn't changed since last Tuesday, no matter what the stock projections are saying—No, that's the third time she's tried to bump the audit, so no more delays; I want that report filed with the SEC by the end of the week, or I'm going to assume she's hiding something—That's in Lucius's purview; are his project leads trying to go over his head again, because I won't have interdepartmental politics interfering with real work—Oh, _hello_ , Lex!"

Bruce plastered on his fakest grin and shooed away the assistants, who—for once—vanished without complaint, even though one of them had been holding a clipboard with an acquisitions request she needed Bruce to sign. "Don't tell me they left you in the lobby," he added, limping slowly but steadily over to the small crowd of unfamiliar people in suits. "Who do I have to fire for that?" They looked like lawyers, mostly, although Bruce pegged at least two for tech consultants and one personal assistant.

At the sound of his enthusiastic greeting, the crowd parted to allow the man in the center to walk forward toward Bruce. He was young, barely older than Bruce himself, wearing an impeccable white business suit that should have washed out his pale skin, but somehow didn't. His eyes were cold, as smooth and bare as his bald head, and when he smiled it reminded Bruce of a shark.

"Bruce," Lex Luthor said, only halfway bothering to hide the disdain in his voice. "It's good to see you. You look well, considering." He held out a hand to shake. "My condolences, for your accident. Shame, that."

"I get by," Bruce said, still smiling vacantly as he accepted the handshake. "The flowers were a nice touch. How is Metropolis, these days?"

"Sunny as ever," Lex said. He stepped to the side and clasped Bruce's elbow where the assistant had been a moment before. He grunted slightly as Bruce forced him to take some of his weight, but recovered relatively smoothly, save for the part where he audibly gritted his teeth. "Unbearably hot, this time of year, of course. I can't wait for autumn."

Bruce hummed in vague agreement. "We've set aside Conference Room 3, on the executive floor, for your proposal," he said, nodding toward the bank of elevators. "I just have to stop by my office, and then I'll be right there."

Lex smiled at him, cold and empty. "Does that mean you'll actually listen to me this time?" he asked.

"Lex," Bruce said, mock-hurt. "You know I always listen to you."

"And yet, oddly enough," Lex said, intently studying Bruce's face as if searching for answers there, "we never seem to end up in business together."

 _I would rather let the Joker flay the skin from every single one of my fingers,_ Bruce thought viciously. "Well, maybe this time I'll actually understand whatever it is you're here to propose," he said, and laughed at his own joke. "I'm warning you, though, I couldn't make heads or tails of the contract when I read through it in the car." He patted Lex on the shoulder, hard, careful to muss up the man's perfectly-pressed suit. "Five minutes, Lex, I promise. Don't start without me!"

Lex shook his head. "You never change, do you, Bruce?" In his cold, empty eyes, Bruce could see both contempt and bewilderment. He might as well have the words stamped on his shiny bald head: _How is an idiot like you in charge of a multi-billion dollar company, and why have none of my clever gambits to buy you out ever worked?_

Bruce grinned. "Now, where would the fun be in that?"

He made his slow, careful way to the executive elevator, gathering his briefly-abandoned assistants in his wake. Once the doors were closed, showing a brassy reflection of the elevator's occupants, he snorted. "So how long should I keep him waiting?" he asked no one in particular.

"Preferably forever," one of the assistants—the one with the clipboard that was now being held in front of Bruce's nose again—muttered. "Sir. He gives me the creeps."

Bruce smiled, scanning through the acquisitions form before signing it. He made a mental note to transfer this one over to Lucius Fox. Anybody who was smart enough not to trust Lex Luthor, and brave enough to say so to her C.E.O's face even when her company was supposedly negotiating a lucrative business deal with him, was someone worth keeping an eye on.

/~*~/

"I think I figured it out," Robin said, adroitly ducking underneath Bruce's punch.

"Figured what out?" Bruce asked. It wasn't fair that Robin was quick, agile, _and_ pint-sized; it made it nearly impossible to land a blow unless he managed to catch it off guard.

"The question," Robin said. It jumped to avoid a kick, planting both bare feet on Bruce's chest and launching itself into a backwards flip. It landed on its feet, like a cat—effortlessly graceful, and extremely smug about it. "The one I'm supposed to be thinking about."

"Tuck in your knees and elbows, if you're going to flip around like that," Bruce said absently. He waved it off when it started to leap back into the sparring match, opting instead for a towel and a water bottle. "And I said to think about it for a few days," he said, focusing on his breathing as he wiped at the back of his neck and headed for the bench at the edge of the training mat. "It's been, what? Eighteen hours?"

Robin cocked its head, still waiting—breathing normally and without a drop of sweat on its skin, of _course_ —in the center of the training mat. "Was it before or after midnight when you asked it?"

"Never mind," Bruce said. He set the half-empty water bottle next to him and began to stretch out his muscles, before they got cool. If he hurried, he'd have enough time for a real shower before dinner, which Alfred always appreciated. "Just tell me. And come stretch."

"My muscles don't need stretching," Robin said, beaming like it was proud of itself.

"Then pretend," Bruce said. "It'll make me feel better." He pointed at the bench next to him. "Sit."

Robin scowled. "I'm not a _dog_ ," it muttered, but it obeyed.

Bruce kept it stewing in silence for a few minutes, watching in amusement as it got bored and began to copy Bruce's stretching poses just for something to do.

"Okay," Bruce said, sitting upright and moving on to arm-stretches, which were more conducive to holding a conversation. "Let me hear it. The night you showed up, why did I promise not to hurt you?"

Robin sat sideways, facing Bruce, and folded its legs in front of it on the bench. "Because," it said primly, "you have an aversion to pain."

"Most people do," Bruce said.

"To feeling it, maybe," Robin said, dismissive. "You have an aversion to _causing_ it."

Bruce blinked. He wondered briefly what any of his teachers would have made of that statement. "Elaborate."

"You don't like causing pain," Robin said. "For whatever reason, it makes you uncomfortable. You don't like hurting me, and you don't like hurting the bad guys, either. You don't even like for me to hurt them, even though it would make things much easier sometimes. _Ergo_ ," it added, spreading its arms in presentation, "you have an aversion to pain."

"Well," Bruce said, "you're not wrong, exactly _._ " Wait, was Alfred teaching it Latin behind Bruce's back? When did that start? "But you're fixating on a symptom, not the root cause."

Robin sighed. "You're about to ask another question, aren't you?"

"We've established that I have an aversion to causing pain," Bruce said, standing up. The shower was calling his name. "Or more accurately, _unnecessary_ pain." He threw his sweat-soaked towel in the general vicinity of the hamper Alfred kept down here for convenience's sake. "So the new question is, _why_ do I have an aversion to causing unnecessary pain _?_ "

Robin flopped belly-down onto the bench. "Because mortals _make no sense,_ " it hissed, the words distorted slightly by the polished wood pressing into its face. "You more than most."

"Figure it out," Bruce said, walking for the elevator. "I have hope for you, yet. And wash up before dinner, or face Alfred's disapproval."

"I don't sweat like you do!" Robin yelled across the growing distance between them.

"If I were you, I wouldn't risk it," Bruce said calmly. "What if just being around me when I'm sweating is enough to make you smell, too?"

"Ew, Bruce!" Robin scrunched up its whole face in disgust, still lying pressed along the unyielding wooden bench. "Why are mortals are so _gross_?"

Bruce forced himself not to smile as he stepped into the elevator. "Dinner's at seven. Don't be late."

/~*~/

"It's not _that_ bad," Robin said, a little over six hours later. "Is it?"

Bruce stared, without blinking. "The shipping container is on fire."

"And all the unconscious tied-up bad guys are over there, in that warehouse where it's safe, and _not_ on fire." Robin pointed. "See?"

"Robin," Bruce growled in his worst Batman-voice, the one that made hardened criminals whimper and beg. " _Why_ is the shipping container on fire?"

Robin fidgeted, grabbing a handful of its yellow-and-black cape in one green-gloved hand. "Well, one of them was smoking when I dropped on them, and apparently whatever is in there is really flammable."

Bruce sighed. "I asked you to keep watch here while I did a quick perimeter sweep."

"I watched!" Robin said. "And I saw bad guys going in and out of the shipping container, carrying boxes." It shifted its weight from foot to foot, eventually releasing its handful of cape. "Should I have waited for you?"

Bruce's lips made a thin line. "You saw bad guys," he repeated, softly. "So you attacked, and the whole thing caught on fire. Before I got back from my _thirty-second-long_ check of the perimeter."

Robin nodded. "It was closer to a minute, though," it said.

Bruce held up a single finger, and Robin swallowed its next words. "And what are we going to tell Captain Gordon?" Bruce asked. "What are we going to say when he asks us what we found _inside_ the illegal shipping container with the suspicious customs tag that he asked us to investigate?"

"Bad guys?" Robin offered. When it saw Bruce's look, it hastily added, "Bad guys who were _smoking!_ "

Bruce took one long, deep breath. Then he took a second one. "Go home," he said eventually. "I've got to call this in."

"But—"

"No," Bruce said, and pointed toward the nearest roof. "No arguments. Go home, before the cops show up and you have to explain what happened."

Robin hesitated. "Am I in trouble?"

"Yes," Bruce said. "You were there when Gordon gave us the tip. You knew finding out the contents of that container was more important than apprehending the men guarding it, but you were bored and impatient. You wanted a fight."

Robin's head dropped.

"Go home, Robin," Bruce said, voice marginally softer. "We'll discuss this—"

Before Bruce could get the word _later_ out, he was interrupted by a massive whoosh of air. A moment later he could feel it, incongruously cold in the Gotham summer heat. He turned, hands reaching for weapons, automatically stepping up so that Robin was at his side. Twenty feet away, on the loading dock, the shipping container was steaming, moisture beading on the sides and smoke trickling lightly upward from the corners, but no longer on fire.

"What—" Bruce began.

"Someone's here," Robin hissed, shifting to a fighting crouch.

"I'm sorry," a voice said from above them—strong, male, with a broad Midwestern accent. "I couldn't help but overhear. I took the liberty of putting the fire out for you."

Bruce looked up. Floating ten feet above them, but drifting slowly down like a balloon without enough helium, was a man in a gaudy red and blue skin-tight costume—no armor at all, as far as Bruce could tell—with a ridiculous cape and knee-high boots. On his broad chest there was a diamond-shaped outline with a stylized S symbol in the center.

"I hope you don't mind," the man added, still floating gently downward, until he was standing in front of them, as calm as if he'd walked up on the street instead of falling, albeit gracefully, out of the night sky. "I don't know if there's anything salvageable in there, but I figured it was worth a try. Sounded like that container might be important."

Robin was vibrating in place, hissing softly at the limits of Bruce's enhanced hearing.

"You know what, I'm being rude," the man said. "Sorry. I'm still new at this." He stepped forward, holding out a hand. Or rather, he started to, but he paused when Robin's hissing abruptly went up in both pitch and volume. Instead, he hovered—thankfully not literally, this time—a few steps away, arm awkwardly half-raised. "Um, hi," he said, giving Robin a side-eye. "I'm—"

"Superman," Bruce growled. The preliminary files he'd managed to gather hadn't mentioned how _imposing_ the man was, taller and broader than Bruce even in the suit, with muscles like something out of a weight-lifting magazine. Everything about him was oddly perfect, from his posture to his chiseled jawline, right down to the stupid little curl of hair over his forehead.

"Oh," the man—alien, actually, assuming he was telling the truth—said. "You've heard of me?"

"You did an interview with a journalist," Bruce said slowly, hands still poised to grab weapons. Of course, if the stories coming out of Metropolis were true, nothing in his utility belt would inflict so much as a scratch.

"Right, of course," Superman said. He smiled, showing off perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth. "Actually I've heard of you, too. I've been looking all over for you since sunset, but I couldn't find you anywhere, and then I saw the fire and I thought—"

"What are you doing in Gotham?" Bruce said, with his best snarl. He couldn't outrun someone who could fly, which meant he'd have to out-maneuver him instead. Physical attacks supposedly just bounced off, but did they slow him down at all? If Bruce could just put some distance between them, he was confident he knew Gotham well enough to get lost in her twisting streets and high-rise buildings. Barring that, there was always the sewers. Close confines would limit the advantages of flight, although the inhuman strength would still be an issue.

"Well, like I said, I was looking for you," Superman said. He glanced down at Robin, who was still steadily hissing, without a pause for breath. "Um, is he okay?"

"Robin?" Bruce asked.

"He doesn't smell right," Robin said, shifting subtly until it was at an angle to put itself in between Bruce and Superman, if it thought it needed to. "He's not human."

"Not to be rude," Superman said, still watching Robin with slightly narrowed eyes, "but neither are you."

Bruce had a thought. "Is he one of yours?" he asked, without taking his eyes off Superman.

"No," Robin said, sounding perturbed. "I don't know _what_ he is."

"Kryptonian. Well, technically," Superman said. He shrugged. " _You_ _'re_ human, though," he said, nodding to Bruce. "Mostly, at least, although there is something a little …" He trailed off, maybe afraid of being rude again. "Honestly, I'm kind of surprised," he added, recovering. "The way they talk about you here, I was expecting a ten-foot tall fire-breathing demon, or something. I'm a little relieved, actually."

Bruce felt his hands clenching into fists. If the alien knew that Bruce couldn't take him in a fight, what leverage did he have? They were calling him a hero in Metropolis, but that could be an act, deliberately good public relations. Why else would he spill all his supposed secrets to the press? What kind of vigilante was bold enough to go running around—or flying around, as the case may be—in broad daylight, without a mask?

 _An invincible one,_ Bruce thought, uneasy. _One that has nothing to fear from the police or the government, and doesn_ _'t care who knows it._ How was Bruce supposed to protect his city from something that powerful?

"He doesn't belong here, Batman," Robin hissed, still vibrating in place, wary and alert. "He smells like strange starlight and old, cold crystal."

That made Superman jump, just slightly. He stared at Robin, tilted his head a little to the side, and opened his mouth to say something.

"Robin, go get a sample from the container," Bruce ordered, interrupting. He kept his attention on Superman, although he had no idea what he could possibly do if the alien decided to make a threatening move. "See if the fire destroyed everything, or if there's something left to analyze."

"But—"

"Now, Robin. Don't argue."

Robin went, making a wide circle around Superman. It even walked backwards, keeping its eyes on them, until it ducked inside the still-steaming container and vanished from view.

"And what is he, exactly?" Superman asked, dubious.

"My partner," Bruce snapped.

"Right. None of my business. Sorry."

"What are you doing in Gotham?" Bruce repeated, his voice still harsh.

"Actually I've been meaning to pop over and introduce myself for a while," Superman said, smiling in a way that was probably supposed to be disarming. "But you know how it is. Things come up, you get distracted …" His smile faded when Bruce showed no signs of returning it. "Anyway, I heard Luthor was going to be in Gotham for some kind of business meeting, and it just seemed like the time had come."

Bruce's eyes narrowed behind his cowl's white lenses. "What do you have to do with Lex Luthor?"

Superman grew solemn. "I think he's up to something," he said, as if sharing a secret. "If he's moving in on Gotham, I can promise you that nothing good will come of it. I wanted to warn you."

Bruce might have laughed, if he hadn't been so on edge. "I can handle Lex Luthor," he said.

"I'm sure you can," Superman said immediately. "I just thought it might be good to pool our knowledge, seeing as how I'm familiar with Luthor's usual schemes, and you know Gotham better than anyone."

"Thank you," Bruce said flatly, unamused. "But I said I could handle it."

Superman looked disappointed. "We're on the same side, you know," he said. "I think it would be good if we could be, well …"

"What?"

Superman shrugged. "I was hoping for 'friends,' actually."

"You should know," Bruce said, not without a certain sense of irony, "I'm not very good at 'friends.'"

"Co-workers, then?" Superman suggested, raising his eyebrows. "We're in the same line of work. So to speak."

Bruce continued to stare.

"Okay," Superman said, lifting his hands in surrender. "You don't trust me. That's understandable." He frowned slightly, as if he didn't quite know what to do when his initial charm offensive failed him. "What can I do to show you that I'm just here to help?"

"Go home," Bruce said immediately. "I don't want you in my city."

"I can—"

Bruce shook his head once, sharply, and it was enough to prevent any further words. "You want me to trust you?" he asked into the resulting silence, crossing his arms over his armored chest. "You want to show me that you have good intentions, that you can be reasoned with, that you can respect boundaries?"

Superman nodded.

"Then go back to Metropolis," Bruce said.

"At least give me a way to contact you," Superman said. "In case of an emergency."

Bruce scowled. "I don't need any help."

"Maybe I will, someday," Superman said, shrugging his absurdly wide shoulders. "Rumor says you're good in a fight."

Bruce hesitated. Assuming Superman was lying, and this was some kind of weirdly intricate trap, having an established means of communications would at least give Bruce the chance to gather valuable information before the other shoe dropped. If, on the other hand, he was telling the truth, and there came a day when Superman—who had invulnerable skin, the ability to fly, ice breath or whatever that had been that had put out the fire earlier, and who knew how many other bizarre powers—needed _Bruce_ _'s_ help in a fight? At that point, Gotham was probably already doomed, and it wouldn't matter anymore. Either way, a method of communication wouldn't hurt, and it just might give him an edge.

"I'll … work on it," Bruce said eventually. Maybe he could rig up a secure phone line in the Cave, one that couldn't be traced? Or find a way to boost their encrypted radio channel to reach all the way to Metropolis? "I'll come to you when I have something."

"How will you find me?"

Bruce did a once-over, moving his head just enough to make it obvious what he was doing as he scanned the man in front of him from head to shiny red toe. "I don't get the impression that you're trying to hide."

Superman smiled, good-natured. That was one point in favor of him being genuine, at least; he wasn't so arrogant that he couldn't laugh at himself. "Okay," he said. "In that case, I'll keep an eye out for you in Metropolis. And listen, tell the kid—"

"Robin," Bruce corrected.

"Robin," Superman repeated obligingly. "Tell him no hard feelings, okay? Maybe we'll get off on a better foot, next time."

"Goodnight," Bruce growled, pointedly.

"Pleasure you meet you, Batman," Superman said instantly, backing up. Without another word, he lifted off the ground, with no dramatic motions or obvious effort at all. He politely waited until he was a good ten feet above street-level before picking up speed, vanishing up and out into the muggy night, red cape flapping theatrically in his wake. He must have been flying just below the speed of sound, which was courteous of him; even at that height, a sonic boom would have woken everyone inside of two miles.

"Wow," Robin said, slowly walking back over from the burned-out shipping container. "He might be dangerous," it said, staring up at the sky where Superman had vanished. "But he's still really cool." It bit its bottom lip. "Do you think he might take me flying if I ask him really, really nicely?"

"Did you get a sample or not?" Bruce asked, suddenly grumpy without knowing quite why.

Robin lifted one of its little evidence vials between two nimble, green-gloved fingers. "The boxes were full of canisters, either gas or liquid that evaporated in the fire. But I found one broken in the corner that still had some droplets in it."

"Good," Batman said. "Take it back for analysis. I'll finish patrolling on my own."

"But—"

"You're still in trouble, remember?" Bruce asked. "You're benched until further notice. Now go home."

Robin closed its fist around the little vial and disappeared.

/~*~/

Bruce finally pulled into the Cave an hour and a half later, eager to strip off the suit and take a shower. When he had leaned in close to do a quick medical check on a would-be mugging victim, who had been attacked while stumbling his way home after a late night at the bar, the man had thrown up foul-smelling beer all over the armor. Sadly, this wasn't the first time something like that had happened. Bruce obviously needed to work on his vomit-avoidance skills.

"Alfred?" he called, shedding his gauntlets, cowl, and cape as the car locked itself down behind him. "Any luck with the sample Robin took, yet?"

"Not long now, sir," Alfred said. He was leaning elegantly against the counter in the lab portion of the Cave, one eye on the spectrometer readings and one eye on Robin, who was hanging upside-down by its knees from a nearby safety railing. It hadn't changed its glamour yet, so its cape was puddled on the floor underneath its head. "Robin tells me we had an unexpected visitor."

Bruce headed for the main computer, scrubbing at his sweaty hair with both hands as he walked. The cowl always left his scalp itchy, and it wasn't like his hair could get any _less_ attractive, not after spending hours plastered to his skull. "We need to keep a closer eye on Lex," he said. He sat down in the wheeled office chair and swung it around to face the screen. "Something about him has Superman spooked, and I want to know what it is."

Bruce opened up a file and began his log for the night, starting with the little everyday crimes and working his way up to a summary of what had gone wrong at the shipping container. Somewhere behind him, he heard Robin's voice start up again, walking Alfred through their activities for the night, a strange sort of mission briefing. It had a tendency to do that whenever it got in trouble, like maybe it was hoping for a second opinion from Alfred. Sometimes Alfred would have to explain why Bruce had gotten upset in the first place, if Robin didn't understand. Attacking prematurely was a pretty straight-forward error, though, so Bruce tuned their conversation out.

He had just moved on to logging his memory of Superman's arrival, wanting to get the details down while they were still fresh, when the spectrometer beeped an alert.

"Alfred?" Bruce called, still doggedly typing his report, making a note to look into the communications issue. He _really_ needed that shower; the stale beer smell was starting to soak into his skin, and he had a whole slew of meetings with Lex's people tomorrow—today—starting at 10 am. Thank God he needed even less sleep now than he used to—or rather, thank Robin. "Did we get a match from our records?"

"Yes, sir," Alfred said. "As a matter of fact, we did."

Something in his voice made Bruce spin the chair around to face him, mission log abandoned in mid-sentence.

Alfred placed the innocuous little vial on the counter with a solid, somehow ominous clink. "It's Venom, sir."

Bruce felt the blood drain from his face as phantom pain, cold and sharp, crept up his spine. "Bane," he said, his voice low and tight. "Bane's in Gotham."

Alfred nodded. "I'm afraid it looks that way," he said.

Robin, still hanging upside-down, looked from Bruce to Alfred and then back to Bruce again. It frowned. "What's a Bane?"

/~*~/


	8. Chapter 8

For the next three days, Bruce spent the majority of his time and energy attempting to smoke Bane out. It wasn't easy. Bruce had found him six months ago by following the street-level Venom distributors back to their suppliers, who in turn had led him to Bane. Even though that particular encounter had gone in Bane's favor, Bruce _had_ managed to dismantle most of his operation before getting put down; Bane wouldn't make that mistake again. In fact, Bruce wasn't even sure how the drug was getting to the streets, this time around; all the usual suspects didn't seem to know anything about it. Gordon's Vice contacts were coming up empty, and there weren't any overdose cases showing up in the hospitals to analyze for a distribution pattern.

It was possible that Venom wasn't on the streets because all the current supply had been in that shipping container, and had gone up in flames, but Bruce didn't believe it. Why bother smuggling a single shipping container into the port? The drug trade was all about volume, even for a designer drug like Venom that was marketable to homeless junkies and professional athletes alike. One shipping container simply wasn't worth Bane's time, and he was too possessive of the drug's secret formula to send a sample of it to Gotham unsupervised.

Either there were several more containers out there somewhere, and Bane was delaying selling his product for some reason, or else there was more to this than a simple drug trade. If Bane had other business in Gotham, a shipment of Venom would provide a decent cover reason for him to be in the city … and Gordon _had_ been awfully quick to catch wind of the illegal container, even though he hadn't known its contents. A suspicious man might think Bane had intended for the cops to raid that container, seeing as how none of the rest of Bane's shipments had ever been confiscated on the docks before. Bruce had been willing to chalk it up to luck, or a sloppy minion, but maybe that had been premature.

Bane, after all, was _smart._ Bruce hated the smart ones. They forced him to second-guess all his assumptions.

Forty hours into his investigation, Bruce dropped the Venom angle—putting out the word both to Gordon and Selina to alert him if their contacts turned anything up, of course—and started looking more closely at the altered customs tag, instead. The implicated parties at the port authority admitted to being bribed, once a visit from the Bat loosened their tongues, but he didn't get much he could use. Each of them had been contacted anonymously, and paid via an electronic transfer rather than a face-to-face hand-off. It took considerable time, ingenuity, and an assist from Alfred to get access to their phone and bank records, but that didn't pan out. He ended up with a shell game of intertwining off-shore accounts, myriad holding companies, and phone numbers that had already been disconnected.

Bruce chased the paperwork as far as he could, wasting fifteen straight hours switching between staring at a computer screen and navigating through the frustrating bureaucracy and interminable holds of phone correspondence. He came out the other side bleary-eyed, his ears ringing from over-exposure to tinkly elevator music and the persistent, low buzzing that always seemed to accompany automated phone menus. Worse, he had only a handful of defunct if not outright fictitious addresses to show for his efforts, some of them in Gotham and others over in Metropolis. None of the locations, as far as Bruce could tell, had anything to do with Bane, Venom, or the illegal drug trade.

"That is a bit odd, sir," Alfred said that evening, when Bruce was three sleepless nights into the search and reaching a critical mass of frustration. Alfred was standing primly off to the side of the large punching bag, with a cool towel in one hand and a water bottle in the other. "I've no doubt that such a scheme is within Bane's abilities, but—well, it doesn't quite seem like his style, does it?"

Bruce shook his head once, flinging sweat droplets from the ends of his hair. Even with Robin's enhancements, his shoulders and back burned, and an ache was forming deep in his hands and wrists. It was time to stop—it had been time to stop more than an hour ago, if he was being honest—but there was a churning in his gut that made him want to stay, to throw just one more punch. Maybe this time the thunk of impact, the shock of it jolting up his arm, the give in the leather, and the satisfying way the large bag crumpled under his blow would be enough to let him relax.

Robin's head poked out from the other side of the bag, just as Bruce slammed his fist into it again. "Ugh, why does it matter _?_ " it asked. It was leaning slightly into the bag, holding it still under Bruce's onslaught. That used to be Alfred's job, until they'd discovered that Bruce's strengthened punches proved somewhat problematic for Alfred's very human physiology. Luckily Robin was more than strong enough to take the job, although its height disadvantage made for an amusing picture. "This is boring. Why is finding this Bane person so important, anyway?" It scuffed its bare feet on the training room floor. "It's not like there aren't other criminals we could be fighting instead."

"You," Bruce said, in between his harsh breaths, "are still benched." He swung at the bag again, noting in a clinical sort of way that his form was slipping. He didn't use boxing much in the field—it just wasn't practical against more than one opponent, and there were more efficient ways to take down an enemy—so it wasn't as automatic and ingrained as most of his techniques. Without the requisite muscle memory, it took a sort of finesse and focus that he was simply too tired to maintain at the moment. "Remember?"

"I remember," Robin said, glum.

For a time there was silence, save for the sound of Bruce's taped knuckles hitting the bag and his muted grunts of effort. There was a primal sort of satisfaction to this, to the sweat and the strain and the increasingly desperate rush of air in and out of his lungs. If not for the binding reinforcing his muscles and heart, he'd have collapsed some time ago. He had wondered how far he could push himself, with his new abilities; it looked like the answer was three straight days, and not nearly far enough, all at the same time. What good was being stronger and faster and more resilient if he couldn't get his hands on Bane to fight? What good was being able to work so many extra hours without being interrupted by sleep if there weren't any leads to chase down?

All he had was a list of addresses and bogus company names, scattered across two cities. He'd go and visit each one in person—the ones that he could find, anyway; some seemed to be entirely made up—but at this point he knew he wouldn't find anything incriminating. Bane had covered his tracks too well, although Bruce couldn't imagine why he had bothered. Bane certainly wasn't afraid of the Bat, not after what had happened six months ago. Why the sudden emphasis on muddled trails and fake holding companies? Of course Bane laundered his money, just like any self-respecting drug lord, but this kind of labyrinthine corporate entanglement was in a whole different league, more suited to white-collar, Wall Street crime than Bane's usual game. Was he diversifying his criminal empire into insider trading all of a sudden?

Or was it possible he was partnering with someone else, someone whose interests or proclivities demanded a different approach?

Before Bruce could follow that thought any further, one particular punch landed wrong—he wasn't sure how, exactly, because the edges of his vision had gone increasingly dim some time earlier—and something _wrenched_ in his shoulder. It was the proverbial final straw, and Bruce's ironclad control shattered like safety glass. He screamed, the low, hoarse sound of a wounded predator, and a moment later he was flat on his back, with no clear idea how he'd gotten there.

"Master Bruce!" Alfred cried out, somewhat belatedly.

Bruce blinked, forcing his vision to resolve into a decipherable image. Robin was sitting on his chest, which should have made it even harder to breathe but somehow didn't. Robin didn't exert any pressure, like it didn't weigh anything at all, and yet when Bruce tried to push it off him to sit up, it didn't budge an inch.

"Lie still," Robin hissed. Its blue eyes were narrowed and its thin black eyebrows had gathered close together like approaching storm clouds on its forehead. "Your shoulder isn't in its socket anymore."

"I'm fine," Bruce said, curt and clipped. "Get off me."

"You're _not_ fine," Robin snapped. "Didn't you hear me? Your shoulder is dislocated."

"Alfred can pop it back into place," Bruce said. "Let me up. Now."

Robin glanced over to where Alfred was standing, silently watching the proceedings, and then back down at Bruce. "No," it said again. "You're going to go right back to punching things, and your body can't take it anymore. Not without some sleep first."

"Robin's right, sir," Alfred added immediately, as if he'd wanted to say something for a while but lacked an opportunity. "You need to rest."

"I can't," Bruce said through clenched teeth. "Bane is still out there."

Robin rolled its eyes. "And how are you supposed to fight him like this?"

Without a word of warning, Robin reached down and pushed hard against Bruce's shoulder. It shouldn't have worked from that angle, but just like all the other impossibilities that surrounded Robin, it did anyway. Bruce's shoulder popped back into place with a sickening crunch and a bright flare of pain that made him hiss through clenched teeth and press his other hand to the joint. He might have curled up in an effort to protect it, if Robin's barely-there weight hadn't been impossibly pinning him down.

"I can only do so much," Robin said. It unceremoniously slapped Bruce's hand out of the way and replaced it with its own palm. A bizarre, soothing coolness spread out from the touch. It looked away from him, but it didn't remove its hand. "Even with the binding's power, you're still _human_ , Bruce."

The effect of those words was immediate and unexpected, even to Bruce himself. Some part of him understood that Robin hadn't meant it that way, but what he heard was _You_ _'_ _re not good enough; you can't beat him._ He went cold, fear twisting in his gut that Bruce immediately funneled into anger, instead. When stacked on top of three sleepless days of creeping dread and increasing frustration at his own inability to solve the case, perhaps it wasn't surprising what happened next.

" _Get off me, Robin,_ " Bruce said, his voice ringing with power.

With a startled cry of pain, Robin leapt clear like it had been shot from a gun. For the first time since its arrival, it didn't land gracefully on its feet—it stumbled, like it might fall over. Alfred stepped forward to steady it, but Robin jerked away from his helping hand. It was shaking all over, and as Bruce sat upright, he could see tears springing up in its eyes. They didn't fall.

"Are you all right?" Alfred asked, in a low tone. Not only was it not directed at Bruce, it was said in such a way that Bruce knew he hadn't been meant to hear it at all. Without Robin's enhancements, he wouldn't have.

Robin ignored Alfred. It was silent for a moment, holding Bruce's gaze, and then it asked, carefully, "Who were you protecting?"

Bruce's emotions were still spiraling out of control, but now there was a sharp, brittle guilt in the mix, too. He opened his mouth but no words came out.

"Who were you protecting?" Robin asked again, louder. Even if Bruce couldn't have seen the tears suspended in its eyes, he could have heard them in its voice. It was _still_ shaking, which meant it was no longer a physical pain response, but an emotional one. "You promised not to hurt me unless you had to protect someone. So tell me. Who were you protecting, Bruce?"

There were several different answers that Bruce might have given it, but none of them would have been true, not completely. Instead, he remained silent.

Robin nodded once. It didn't seem surprised so much as disappointed. "So much for mortal promises," it said.

Bruce watched as it turned its back on him and began to walk toward the elevator.

Once it was gone, Alfred sighed and knelt down next to where Bruce was still sitting on the floor. Without looking him in the eye, Alfred handed over the damp towel and the water bottle. He didn't seem surprised when Bruce didn't make use of either, opting instead to unwind the tape from his hands. The sound of the glue ripping apart as the tape came loose from itself—and then, the quieter rasp of old skin cells flaking away with it—was loud in the sudden silence.

"Is that how you teach empathy, Master Bruce?" Alfred asked, once Bruce's hands were tape-free, leaving behind only a sticky residue and dull red streaks, like he'd been burnt. There was no judgment in Alfred's tone, but then again, there didn't really need to be. "What lesson do you think Robin learned, just now?"

Bruce didn't have an answer for that, either. "I asked it to move," he said instead, hearing the defensiveness in his tone even as he spoke, and hating it. "Robin knows better than to ignore a direct order like that, and it did it _twice_."

"It was trying to help," Alfred said, stern. "Do you want a puppet, or a partner? You can't blame it for not listening, given the state you're in."

Bruce shoved himself upright, off-balance for a moment until his feet steadied. Now that he was relatively still, without the background noise of physical exertion, he realized just how off-kilter he really was. His skin felt scraped raw, every inch of him sweat-stained and drooping and overly sensitive. His eyelids scratched like sandpaper when he blinked, and there was a tightness in his chest when he tried to take a deep breath. The only part of him that didn't hurt at all was his recently-dislocated shoulder, where Robin had placed its cold hand. That made him feel abruptly worse.

Still, he'd kept going through more serious exhaustion before, and he'd do it again.

"I'm fine, Alfred," Bruce insisted.

"You're not," Alfred said flatly. "And if you're going to act like a child, throwing a temper tantrum just because you've hit a dead end, then I'm going to treat you like one." He pointed toward the elevator. "No patrol tonight. Go to bed, Master Bruce."

"I have to—"

"Now," Alfred said, somehow stern and gentle all at once. "You're to get at least eight hours of sleep, and then you're to put in an appearance at the office tomorrow so that nobody decides to report you missing."

"But Bane—"

"Isn't going anywhere," Alfred interrupted again. "And if he is, then so be it. He won't be our problem, then."

Bruce crossed his arms. That wasn't acceptable, and Alfred damn well knew it.

"Bed, Master Bruce," Alfred said. He raised his eyebrows. "Don't make me resort to unseemly tactics."

Bruce wasn't sure what those might be, unless Alfred was threatening to spike his next cup of tea with a sedative, but he was sure that he didn't want to find out. Alfred rarely pushed things to the point of giving orders, always cognizant of the delicate power balance between them, but once he _had_ there was no point in fighting him. Whether it was Alfred's sheer strength of personality, or something to do with the fact that he had raised Bruce from childhood, Bruce was incapable of outright defying him at moments like these. Especially when some part of Bruce knew that Alfred was right, and just didn't want to admit it.

"All right," Bruce said, hands slightly elevated in surrender. He bent over to retrieve the water bottle, knowing Alfred wouldn't trust him to rehydrate himself if he didn't drink something now, where Alfred could watch him do it. His throat was so dry that the no-longer-particularly-cool water burned going down, and then sat like a dull, slimy creature in his stomach. Maybe it could keep the churning guilt company.

Bruce had taken only a few steps toward the elevator when Alfred's voice interrupted him. "Master Bruce?"

Bruce didn't turn, but he stopped in place, turning his head slightly to show he was listening.

Behind him, Alfred's voice was small and sharp. "Find a way to make it up to him."

Bruce briefly closed his eyes, an extended blink. He couldn't bring himself to correct Alfred's pronoun, this time. "Tomorrow," he offered.

"Tomorrow," Alfred agreed, relief evident in his tone now that Bruce was listening to reason, and he could in good conscience revert to his more familiar role. "Get some sleep, sir."

/~*~/

"Robin?" Bruce called, knocking his knuckles gently into the wood of the bedroom door. "Can I come in?"

Robin's voice was guarded when it answered, "What do you mean?"

Bruce hesitated. "I know you're mad at me," he said. "If you don't want me coming in your room while you're still upset—"

"But it's your house," Robin called through the door, sounding confused. It was such a familiar tone for Robin, who was still hopelessly lost sometimes despite the months it had lived here, that it almost made Bruce smile. "Why would you not be able to go inside parts of your own house?"

"The Manor is mine," Bruce agreed. "But this part of it is yours, which means you get to decide if you want me in it. Barring emergencies, of course." He waited a long moment, but Robin didn't say anything else. "Can I come in for a moment?" he prompted again. "Please?"

"Okay," Robin said. This time it sounded a little uncomfortable. "I guess."

Bruce swung the door open and stepped inside. As usual, Robin had opened both large windows as far as they would go, with the curtains thrown wide. Bright summer-afternoon sunlight poured inside, bathing the richly-toned wooden furniture in a golden glow. Robin was barefoot and bare-chested, lying on the floor in a sunbeam as if trying to soak up as much daylight as possible. All it needed was a pair of colorful sunglasses, and it would have made a postcard-worthy image: a boy relaxing by the pool, or maybe under a sprinkler in the backyard. It wasn't a particularly indoor sort of pose, but then again Robin wasn't really an indoor sort of creature, even on its best days.

In his perfect, pressed business slacks and button-down shirt—he had come straight from a short stint at the office, per Alfred's strongly-worded recommendation from the night before—Bruce felt distinctly out of place, too monochrome and sterile. Without really thinking about it, he reached up to loosen his tie. Then he unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled his sleeves up to his elbows. Something about Robin's unselfconscious freedom, its complete refusal to wear shoes or any more clothing than necessary at any given time, was infectious. Bruce had a sudden, powerful urge to lay down on the floor next to it, soaking up sunlight. It seemed peaceful, if uncomfortable given the bare floorboards.

"What do you want?" Robin asked, without opening its eyes or moving at all from its place on the floor.

Bruce didn't answer for a moment. Instead, he walked further inside the room and sat down on the end of Robin's perfectly-made bed. He hesitated briefly, but then toed off his expensive loafers and swung his legs up onto the quilt, facing the window and the sunlight streaming through it. He felt impossibly younger, somehow, with his tie undone and his sleeves rolled up, socked feet tucked into the backs of his knees. He had become an over-sized parody of the boy he hadn't been in a very long time, if he'd ever been that boy at all.

"Bane is the person who hurt me," Bruce said, without fanfare.

Slowly, Robin sat up and spun around until it was facing the bed. With the window at its back, its long shadow stretched across the floor between them, not quite reaching the place where Bruce sat. "Your spine," Robin said, and it wasn't a question.

Bruce nodded anyway. "It doesn't excuse the way I've been acting, since he came back," he said. "But I wanted you to understand."

Robin watched him, its blue eyes sharp. "He took it away from you," it said softly.

A coarse, harsh laugh tore itself out of Bruce's throat, so violently that it ached. "He took a lot of things away from me." Bruce's health, his independence, his confidence. His mission.

"He took the night away," Robin said, sadly. "He took the stars, and the rooftops, and freedom. He took Batman."

Bruce could only nod again.

"No wonder you summoned me," it said, with a small, crooked sort of smile. "You'd have wasted away, like a flower without water."

Bruce had an absurd image of himself as the fainting heroine of a Victorian novel, and laughed again. It was more natural, this time, and less bitter. Something that had been wound tight and uncomfortable inside him since the night before relaxed, ever so slightly. "Alfred wouldn't have allowed that to happen. Not completely."

"He scares you, doesn't he?" Robin asked, curiously intent.

"Alfred?"

"Bane," Robin said. It cocked its head. "You weren't angry with me, last night. You were scared of him, and trying to hide it. I was just the convenient target."

Part of Bruce thought: _Maybe I have less to teach it about human emotions than I thought._ The rest of him thought: _Ouch._

"I'm sorry," Bruce said, somewhat awkwardly. He was bad at apologies, partially from a lack of practice. What else was he supposed to say? _I didn_ _'_ _t mean to_? Only, he had, at the time. _It won_ _'_ _t happen again?_ He wouldn't risk breaking yet another promise. _Forgive me?_ He hadn't earned that, and anyway that was Robin's decision to make, not Bruce's to ask for. _How can I fix it?_ What if it couldn't be fixed?

In the end, he just repeated himself. "I'm sorry, Robin. I shouldn't have taken out my frustration on you. You were trying to help."

Robin's head tilted, its eyes narrowing slightly in confusion. "You're … apologizing?"

Bruce fidgeted on the bed. "I realize I'm not terribly good at it," he said, half under his breath. "But you don't have to sound so shocked that I'm trying."

Robin's head remained tilted. "You're apologizing," it repeated, in a skeptical tone. "To me."

"I am," Bruce said, becoming serious. "Does that surprise you?"

"You never do anything without at least one reason," Robin said slowly, puzzling something out. "But you don't need to apologize to _me_." It stared at him for a long moment, hesitant. "I can't punish you."

Something in the vicinity of Bruce's heart clenched painfully. "Is that the only reason you apologize, when you've done something wrong?" he asked quietly. "So that I won't punish you?"

Robin waited a moment before it nodded, obviously expecting a trap of some kind. "It doesn't always work, though," it said. It spread its hands to indicate the room around them. "Like when you keep me inside for four straight days just because _one_ little shipping container caught on fire. It's not like _I_ started it! The bad guys were the ones who—"

"Robin," Bruce said, chiding.

It fell silent and went still, eyes on the floor before it.

"You made a mistake in the field, and mistakes have consequences," Bruce said. "That's how we learn. If the actual consequences—like our investigation getting stuck with no leads—aren't important to you, then you won't internalize the lesson." He shrugged and sat back a little. "In that case, I have to manufacture consequences that you _do_ care about. Like no going outside for a while."

"An incentive to behave," Robin said bitterly.

"If it helps you to think of it that way, then yes."

Robin started to hiss, then remembered to switch to a more human-sounding sigh. "That still doesn't explain why you have to apologize for hurting me. I can't keep _you_ from going outside." It paused, eyes widening. "Can I?"

"No," Bruce said flatly. "You're fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of an apology."

Robin's answer was swift, matter-of-fact, and hit Bruce like a slap. "To placate someone with the power to hurt you, after you've upset them," it said.

"That's not an apology," Bruce insisted. "That's … a defense mechanism learned to survive an abusive relationship."

Robin pulled its knees up to its chest and rested its arms around them. "A … what?"

 _That_ , Bruce thought wryly, _is a whole different conversation._ "Never mind. When you apologize to someone, it shouldn't be about making you feel better, or avoiding a punishment, or trying to earn forgiveness. A real apology is about the other person, the one you hurt. The goal should be trying to make _them_ feel better, or to make up for what you did."

Robin blinked without saying anything.

Bruce rubbed one hand across the front of his face. Why did explaining these things to Robin always give him a headache? "I hurt you, last night. After I promised that I wouldn't. You're not obligated to forgive me for that, if you don't want to." He placed his hands in his lap and leaned forward, toward Robin. "You didn't do anything wrong. I lost control of my emotions because I have bad memories of what happened the last time Bane was in town, and you got caught in the explosion." He met Robin's eyes, calm and sincere. "It wasn't your fault. I'm sorry it happened."

Robin continued to stare at him, radiating uncertainty.

"Does hearing that make you feel any better?" Bruce asked, not particularly hopeful.

Slowly, Robin shook its head. "Not really."

"Is there something I can do that _will_ make you feel better?" he asked, rueful. He was half-expecting a request for an entire bucket of lemon sherbet, or a game of daylight tag about the Manor grounds. Or, perhaps, to be allowed to disembowel the next bad guy they caught; there was never any telling, with Robin.

"Why?"

"Because that's the right thing to do, when you've hurt someone," Bruce said.

"We hurt people all the time," Robin said, eyes narrowed. "We don't apologize for that, or worry about making them feel better. We just leave them tied up for the cops."

"Those are people we hurt on purpose," Bruce said. Then he winced, because he was _supposed_ to be teaching Robin about _not_ hurting people, intentionally or otherwise. "No, wait, that came out wrong." Bruce rubbed at the back of his neck, fighting a yawn. His eight hours of sleep had done wonders for his physical wellbeing, but he wasn't one hundred percent yet. "We make the _choice_ to hurt those people, because we're trying to protect someone else, or stop them from doing something wrong."

Robin stared at him as if Bruce was speaking a foreign language it had studied once in school, a long time ago, and only somewhat remembered. "Hurting bad guys is okay. Hurting me is … not okay?" It frowned. "Is there something special about me?"

"No," Bruce said.

"So hurting me _is_ okay?"

"No," Bruce said again, more sharply. "It's … Let's start over." He made a broad gesture with both hands, as if he was wiping clean a massive blackboard. Not that Robin would know what he was pantomiming; it had internalized just enough of the trappings of elementary school to relay stories to Gordon—recess, cafeteria food, art class, fractions—and nothing more. "Hurting people—anyone—is always bad," Bruce said, holding out one palm, flat, like he was weighing something in his hand. "Right?"

Robin shrugged. "You keep saying so."

"Just trust me on that one," Bruce insisted. "Now, sometimes other people do bad things, or are planning to do bad things, or are contributing to a system that allows bad things to happen." His second hand joined the first, held flat in front of him. "Two different things, both of which are bad. With me so far?"

It was clearly dubious, but Robin nodded.

"Okay," Bruce said. "Our job is to figure out which thing is worse." He made a balancing gesture, raising first one palm and then the other, like a scale. "If the less bad thing is hurting someone, so that the more bad thing doesn't happen, or stops happening, then it's okay to hurt them." He hesitated. "Only as much as necessary," he added. "If we can stop the worse thing without hurting someone, that should be our first move."

It looked suddenly nervous. "How do we tell which bad thing is worse?"

Trust Robin to hit on the crux of the problem right away. "Sometimes it's easy, if an innocent life is in danger," Bruce said. "Like at the bank last week. Sometimes it's hard, and all the choices seem like bad ones. On those days, we just do the best we can."

Robin's voice was small and afraid. "And if we choose wrong?"

Bruce thought about it for a long minute. "I guess it depends on what the consequences were. Maybe we make up for it as best we can, and learn from the mistakes we made." He shrugged his shoulders once. "Or, if it was really unforgivable … maybe we stop, and choose not to hurt anyone ever again. Maybe we even go to the G.C.P.D. and tell them who we are, so they can arrest us. In that case, it would be like an apology, to make up for what we'd done."

Robin's nostrils flared wide. "I will not be caged," it warned.

"No," Bruce said quietly, oddly melancholy. On the off-chance anyone connected Bruce Wayne's probably-graphic murder to the feral boy no one even knew was living with him—or, if Gordon somehow put the pieces together about Batman and looked for the child under his care—the police would never manage to arrest Robin. Bruce could all too easily imagine the bloodbath that would result if they tried, with Bruce no longer around to curb the creature's darker impulses. "I don't suppose you will."

Robin tucked its legs underneath itself and flowed smoothly up to its feet, all in one motion. It padded silently over to the bed and hopped up, only lightly jostling the mattress as it curled up next to Bruce. "You really want me to learn this stuff, don't you?" it asked quietly.

Bruce shifted his upper body just enough to face it. "It's important," he said.

"Why?" it asked, for the second time in as many minutes.

"Because," Bruce said, keeping his voice even and calm, although it took great effort, "in less than nine months, I'll be gone, and you'll have to make these kinds of decisions on your own."

Robin looked away, toward the wall. Its nimble fingers plucked absently at the quilt, teasing loose a thread. "You know that I'm going to kill you, when your year is up."

"It's not something I can forget," Bruce said, smiling sightly.

"Is that why you try so hard to be nice to me?" it asked, still looking anywhere except at Bruce. Between its fingers, the thread pulled taut against the fabric, until the stitching started to give way. "So that when the time comes, I'll kill you quickly?"

Bruce swallowed. "Would that work?" he asked, trying to sound only mildly curious.

Robin closed its eyes and ripped the thread free with a small, sharp snap. "No," it said flatly, with great certainty. "When the day comes, it will be bloody and terrible. Nothing you do or say can change that."

There was an awkward sort of silence between them for a moment.

Then Robin finally turned its face toward him. It smiled, clear and cold. "Can we stop playing these morality games, now?"

"No," Bruce said. "I still have nine months. I can teach you right and wrong. I _have_ to believe that."

"It won't save you," Robin said, sounding almost wistful.

"It doesn't matter," Bruce replied. "Saving myself isn't the point."

"Then what is?"

"Gotham," Bruce said. "All those people that we protect, every night? They'll still need protecting, after I'm gone."

Robin huffed. "When the binding breaks, I won't care."

"I don't believe that."

"Then you are a fool, Bruce Wayne," Robin said, with a hiss under its words. "I am what I am. Change is a mortal construct; my kind are not capable of it."

Bruce shook his head. "Have you ever tried?" he asked.

Robin looked briefly taken aback.

Before it could answer, there was a gentle knock on the frame of the open door. Bruce turned to see Alfred standing in the hallway, his expression carefully neutral. There was no way to tell whether he had heard any of the preceding conversation.

"Sorry to interrupt, sir," Alfred said. His eyes briefly flicked to where Bruce's shoes lay discarded at the foot of the bed, but Bruce couldn't tell if he was appalled that Bruce had removed them, or grateful that at least he hadn't inflicted the dirty soles on the bedspread. "You wanted to keep a closer eye on Mr. Luthor's movements?"

Bruce forced his brain to switch tracks, thinking back to four days ago, before the Bane investigation had pushed everything else to the bottom of the priority list. "Yeah. Just something Superman said. Why?"

"He's in Gotham," Alfred replied. "His private plane just landed. This is his third trip in the last two weeks, according to the flight plans I was able to obtain from the FAA."

Bruce frowned. "I just got rid of his last proposal earlier this week. He can't have come up with another one so …"

Suddenly, his brief thought from the night before resurfaced: Bane's odd behavior could have been explained by his having a partner, one who could throw shell companies and financial acumen at covering their tracks.

"Son of a bitch," Bruce said, uncurling his legs to stand. He ignored Alfred's quiet disapproval at his cursing. Bruce should have seen this _days_ ago. "Lex must have hired Bane to smuggle something through the port for him. That's why we can't find any Venom on the streets—that container was a decoy, masking whatever it is that Lex is after. Now he's here to collect it."

"Are you certain, sir?" Alfred asked, sounding skeptical. "What could Mr. Luthor need that he couldn't have shipped to himself legally? And why bring it through Gotham?"

"More corrupt customs officials?" Bruce mused. "Or maybe that was Bane's stipulation, since he has contacts here."

"Either way," Alfred said, shaking his head, "it's a awful lot of trouble. What could be that important?"

"I don't know, but I'm going to find out." Bruce was already to the door when he turned around. "Come on," he snapped at Robin. "You're coming off the bench."

Robin leapt immediately to its feet.

"But, sir," Alfred protested, calling after them. "It's still daylight!"

"I have a phone call to make first, anyway."

/~*~/

"Are you sure this thing will work?" Bruce asked, staring dubiously at the device plugged into his mobile phone.

"Reasonably, sir," Alfred replied. "And a cell is safer than the land-line. At worst, someone might be able to locate the tower we're bouncing off of—"

"Which covers a quarter of the city," Bruce said. The information wasn't new—they'd hashed out their options for untraceable communications in and around the Bane investigation, and this was the best one they could implement on short notice—but it didn't hurt to go over it again. Somehow, this felt more dangerous than leaping off a skyscraper without his grapple.

Bruce took a moment to prepare his Batman-voice, which was surprisingly difficult to do when he was still wearing his shirt and slacks from upstairs, and then dialed the number that was displayed on the screen of the Cave computer. Bruce wasn't sure which was more impressive: that Alfred had procured the scrambler for his phone in less than four days, or that he'd found a way to get cell service this far underground. Bruce had lost a call by driving under a highway overpass, once.

"Remember," he added, as the phone began to ring on the other end, "don't say anything. I don't know how good his hearing is."

Robin rolled its eyes and theatrically mimed zipping its lips shut. Alfred only nodded.

There was a click, and the ringing stopped. _"_ _Daily Planet,"_ a voice said in Bruce's ear. _"This is Clark Kent."_

Bruce fought the urge to sigh. It was the exact same voice, with no attempt to hide the broad Midwestern accent or the slightly-cheerful, boyishly charming tone. Either everyone in Metropolis was face-blind and dull-witted, or everyone already knew and they just were humoring him by pretending otherwise. With no preamble, Bruce said, "Do you still want to help?"

There was a pause on the other end of the phone, and then a brief scuffling noise like someone shifting things around on a desk. _"_ _I'm sorry,"_ the voice said, still warm and annoyingly polite. _"_ _Who is this?"_

"Don't insult my intelligence, or yours," Bruce said, with just enough of a growl to his words to get his point across. "If you didn't want me figuring out your name, you should have worn a mask."

The phone transmitted a soft, puzzled laugh. _"_ _I'm afraid you have me mixed up with someone else."_

"Really?" Bruce asked. "There are a fair number of people in Metropolis who are your approximate age, with your height, weight, hair color, and eye color—the DMV got me that far— but only a small percentage of them work in a kind of job that would let them run off to save the day during regular business hours without somebody noticing and filing a complaint. I was thinking freelance writer or cab driver, actually, but investigative reporter works, too. And it explains why you trusted the press enough to do an interview with Miss Lane."

 _"_ _Um,"_ the voice said. _"_ _I don't know what you're talking—"_

"That still left me with a couple thousand options," Bruce continued, "but not so many who arrived in Metropolis around the time you revealed yourself. Of course, you might have been there longer, waiting for your opportunity, but I had a hunch you're not the type to sit around watching bad things happen without stopping them. I was betting on you only being in the city for a few weeks, a month tops, before somebody caught you saving the day on camera." He hummed slightly, clicking through to a different document on the computer screen. "And then, what do you know? Out of my remaining candidate pool, only one was from a small town in Kansas—you really should find a way to hide that accent; it stands out in the big city—where random accidents and strange miracles kept saving the lives of locals. Funny, how there hasn't been anything like that since you left for college. Smallville, was it? I hope somebody at the census bureau got fired for that one."

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"Let's not play games, Kent," Bruce said. "Still think I'm bluffing? I can read your high-school transcript to you, if you'd like. Oh, look, there's a home phone number. I wonder if your mother will talk to me instead? Your adoption paperwork is pretty solid, but only because nobody ever had a reason to question it. Any serious scrutiny, and it's going to unravel right into some lawyer's lap. What's the story behind that, anyway? Don't tell me you fell right out of the sky onto the Kent farm, and they just decided to keep you. I imagine super-powered toddlers are a little more trouble than the average stray puppy."

Something creaked on the other end of the phone, an object suddenly subjected to immense pressure. It might have been the arm of a chair, the corner of a desk, or even the phone itself. _"_ _You should know something about me, Batman,"_ the voice said. It was still polite, but there was sudden cold strength underneath it. _"_ _I'm not real fond of threats. Or do you prefer Mr. Wayne, when the sun's still up?"_

Bruce went very still.

 _"_ _Yeah,"_ the voice said. _"_ _Not so fun when it's the other shoe, is it? I wasn't going to say anything, but masks don't really work when you can see right through them. Normally I wouldn't go snooping, but with you I didn't have to. Kind of a liability, isn't it, having your face plastered all over magazines and celebrity TV shows? That thing ever comes off in a fight, and half the world is going to know who you are on sight."_

"Well," Bruce said, struggling for calm. He dropped the Batman-voice and spoke normally, ignoring Alfred's sudden concerned look. "That makes things simpler, doesn't it?"

 _"_ _You tell me."_

"You never answered my first question," Bruce reminded him. "Do you still want to help me with Luthor?"

There was a long pause.

 _"_ _What do you need?"_

"Not over the phone," Bruce said. "Thirty-second and Monroe, Gotham's east side." There was an old factory there, closed for at least twenty-five years but never torn down or refurbished. They used it as a rest-stop when on patrol, because it had good sight-lines down the surrounding streets and no security. It was as good a place as any to meet, and maybe the familiar ground would give them an advantage. "The roof, an hour after sundown."

 _"_ _What if I have other plans tonight?"_

"Then don't come," Bruce snapped. "You're the one who wanted to play 'Let's Be Friends,' not me."

 _"_ _This is you being friendly?"_

Bruce didn't bother replying.

There was another long pause, and then a faint sigh.

 _"_ _All right. I'll be there."_

Bruce ended the call without another word, which he knew was dangerously close to petulant. How could he possibly have been prepared for someone who could casually see through his mask? If this went south, would "Clark Kent," or whatever his real name was, turn on him?

"So," Alfred said, still looking worried. "What now?"

"We make sure I'm right about that container holding something other than Venom," Bruce said. He put the phone down, spun the chair around, and started scrolling through his files from the last four days. At least this was a problem he knew how to approach.

"And _then_ we go outside?" Robin asked, hopeful. The air around it was already shimmering, as if it was ready to shift its glamour into cape and armor at the slightest indication that they were ready to go, even though it knew that Bruce took several minutes to get dressed.

"The moment it gets dark enough," Bruce said, smiling grimly.

/~*~/

Robin smelled him before Bruce saw him, but not by much. It only had time to hiss, "He's here," and then Bruce felt the breeze of displaced air as something fell—or dove, perhaps, since it was a controlled descent—onto the factory rooftop. The shape slowed as it approached, until Kent stepped down onto the roof with about the same force as someone walking down a flight of stairs, his blood-red cape swinging in his wake.

"Evening," Kent said, taking a few steps closer to the edge of the roof where Bruce and Robin had been hidden. His tone was still a little guarded, but his face was open and calm. "Am I late?"

In fact, Kent was a few minutes early, but Bruce wasn't about to say so. "Lex is in town, tonight," he said, using his Batman-voice even though there was no one on the roof to fool. It was inseparable from the suit, and anyway it was a good habit to maintain, for safety's sake. "He's working with a man named Bane, a drug-smuggler operating out of Santa Prisca."

Kent sighed. "I see your manners haven't improved," he said. He pointedly ignored Bruce and smiled down at Robin, instead. "Hello, Robin," he added. "How's your week been?"

Robin's white lenses narrowed in its mask as it crossed its arms. "Boring," it said flatly.

"Right," Kent said. "Straight to business it is." He turned his attention back to Bruce. "Why would Luthor be working with a two-bit drug lord?"

"There's nothing small time about Bane's operation," Bruce said, annoyed. Was there even a real drug trade in sunny, perfect Metropolis? Their Vice division probably spent their time chasing after middle-class kids who had decided to sell their parents' old pain medications for petty cash. "Santa Prisca is the narcotics capital of the Caribbean, and over the last twelve months Bane has taken over almost all of it. He's got his fingers in a lot of pies—"

"Primarily Venom, though, right?" Kent said. "It acts like a steroid, dramatically increasing strength and muscle gain." When he noticed Bruce and Robin both staring at him, he snorted. "What? I work for the newspaper, remember?"

"Not _just_ Venom," Bruce said. "He's been linked to gun running and human trafficking, too."

"Okay," Kent said. "You still haven't explained what any of this has to do with Luthor."

Bruce took a breath and reminded himself to be patient. "Lex must have needed something brought into the country, quietly, and he hired Bane to smuggle it for him. It's a good choice; Bane already has a system in place to move goods without attracting notice from customs or the police."

Kent frowned. "Luthor's a multi-billionaire. With that kind of money, laws—even international ones—tend to be malleable, when it suits him." He crossed his arms over the symbol on his chest. "What could he be smuggling that he would need Bane's help?"

"Well," Bruce said, "it doesn't weigh very much. Somewhere in the vicinity of twenty pounds, and it's fairly small."

"How could you possibly know that?" Kent asked.

"Shipping companies keep weight and balance records," Bruce explained. "Given the number of crates Robin saw carried off the container, and the wreckage left behind after the fire was put out—"

"You're welcome," Kent said dryly.

"—I know how much the container should have weighed, if it was truly full of Venom vials." Bruce shrugged his shoulders once, making his cape swirl around him until it encased him entirely. "The extra weight was focused at the rear end, so it must have been one small object, or at most a few of them, packaged together. Otherwise the weight would be more evenly distributed."

"Okay," Kent said, conceding the logic. "So it's something small and dense, something Luthor was willing to go to a great deal of trouble for …"

"And he's worried about secrecy," Bruce added. "So much so that he didn't want to bring it in through Metropolis, in case anybody found it."

Something dark and only a half-step away from panic passed across Kent's face before he could hide it.

"What?" Bruce snapped instantly.

"It's … probably nothing," Kent said, not at all convincingly.

"I don't have time for games," Bruce said, voice even harsher than usual. "If you know what Bane smuggled into my city—"

"I _don_ _'_ _t_ know," Kent said. Then something in his face shifted unpleasantly. "Not for sure." At Bruce's flat, unimpressed look, he relented. "I might have a pretty good guess, though."

"So tell us," Robin said, impatiently. "It might help us find Bane so we can _finally_ have some real fun."

Kent gave Robin a distinctly worried side-eye.

"Superman," Bruce barked, refocusing the man's attention on him. "What is it?"

Kent sighed. "It's probably a rock, or if it's refined it can look like crystal." He hesitated. "It will be green, and sometimes it glows, like a—"

"It's radioactive?" Bruce interrupted, voice high and tight. "Lex is smuggling radioactive material?" No wonder Lex hadn't wanted it in Metropolis. Had it been lead-shielded during transport? Only, there hadn't been enough extra weight to account for a containment system …

"No, it's not," Kent said. "Well, it is, but—Look, it's complicated."

Bruce clenched his gauntleted hands into fists. "How much danger is my city in?"

"No," Kent said again. "You don't understand. It's not dangerous, for humans."

It took Bruce only a moment to put the pieces together, based on the way Kent had hesitated between _dangerous_ and _for humans_. "It can hurt you," he guessed, and didn't want for Kent to confirm it. "If the rumors I've been hearing are true, it might be the only thing that can."

Kent winced. "I don't even know how Luthor could have found out about it, let alone located some." He shook his head, causing the little curl on his forehead to bounce. "If he gets it to his R&D department, he can weaponize it."

"He'll be able to kill you," Bruce mused. "Or at least, hire somebody to do it for him."

This time, Kent gave Bruce the worried side-eye. "You don't sound too upset about that."

"I'm in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of Lex Luthor's hands," Bruce said, which was true as far as that went. It was why he spent so much time making sure Wayne Enterprises never got into business with LexCorp. "So I guess that puts us on the same side of this one."

Kent stared at him for a moment, weighing something. "And afterward? What happens when—" He broke off mid-sentence, turning his head to look out over the city streets.

Bruce glanced at Robin, but it only shrugged at him.

"What now?" Bruce asked.

"Something's very wrong," Kent said.

Before Bruce could demand a better answer, Robin twitched as if it was startled by something. "Oh," it muttered. "No kidding."

Bruce watched the two of them, wary, as they stood staring in opposite directions. Robin was scanning the nighttime city in smooth arcs, the way Bruce had taught it to look for trouble, while Kent's attention flitted in sharp increments from one spot to another. Whatever it was, it was everywhere around them.

Bruce shifted his cape to make reaching for his weapons easier. "Somebody tell me what the problem is, right _now_ —"

Then, gradually, his ears began to pick up the sound. It built like a wave, an orchestra of a hundred different instruments joining one by one to a crescendo, each of them a siren. It sounded like every single emergency vehicle in the city got a call, all at once. It came from all directions, but Bruce could make out clusters where the sounds tripped over each other more chaotically—hubs that must have been police precincts, hospitals, and fire stations. As the seconds ticked by, the sounds spread rapidly outward, becoming a uniform blanket over the entire city.

"Maybe it's a city-wide drill of some kind?" Kent said hopefully.

"Look," Robin hissed. It tapped Bruce's thigh and pointed.

Some miles away, but still visible against the murky night sky, Gordon's signal for them was shining against the clouds.

"We have to go," Bruce said. He tapped to activate his radio. "Alfred? What's going on?"

 _"_ _I was just about to call you, sir,"_ Alfred's voice said. It had the tight control of someone trying not to show anxiety. _"Alarms are going off at three different banks, at least one museum, and there's reports of armed gangs hitting hospitals and doctor's offices all over town."_

"Money, antiques, and drugs," Bruce said, disparagingly. "It's like the criminal holy trinity. But this must be every gang in the city—Penguin, Scarface, Maroni. It's not like them to work together."

 _"_ _That's not all, sir,"_ Alfred said. _"_ _Bane was spotted, along with several of his supporters. Apparently, they staged a breakout at Arkham Asylum."_

Bruce, who had been readying his grapple in preparation for crossing the city to answer Gordon's signal, stopped in his tracks. "What?" he said. "Who? Who got out?"

 _"_ _Waylon Jones, Pamela Isley, Garfield Lynns, Jonathan Crane, Robert Langstrom, Basil Carlo, and … well."_

Bruce closed his eyes. Killer Croc. Poison Ivy. Firefly. Scarecrow. Man Bat. Clayface. Nearly every villain he'd managed to put into custody over the last two years. All his work since becoming Batman, undone in a single night. Not to mention Bane running around, whom he'd never caught in the first place. "And the Joker," he said, because that was the only name Alfred would hesitate to say.

" _Yes, sir._ _"_

"This isn't a coincidence," Bruce said, furious. "This is Lex making sure we're too distracted to deal with him."

"Lucky for you," Kent said, "you've got reinforcements in town."

Bruce stared at Kent for a moment, considering. "You want to help?"

"Your city is about to be a war zone," Kent said flatly. "You need all the extra hands you can get."

Bruce felt his jaw clench, but he knew Kent had a point. When the choice came between his pride and protecting Gotham, it wasn't really a choice at all. "Fine," he said, curt. "Find Lex and handle the radioactive rocks. Robin and I will try to keep the city from tearing itself apart."

"That's backwards," Robin said, sounding confused. "If the rocks can hurt him, but not us, shouldn't _we_ find them?"

Kent raised his eyebrows. "Kid's got a point," he said. "If I even managed to find Luthor, which there's no guarantee I could do in a strange city, I couldn't get close to him." He spread his hands, indicating the streets around them, which were still ringing with a hundred overlapping sirens. "Putting out a bunch of simultaneous fires, on the other hand? _That_ _'_ _s_ in my wheelhouse. And I can cover more ground faster than you can."

Bruce shook his head. "The Gotham P.D. doesn't know you," he pointed out.

Kent gestured to Robin. "So I'll take the kid with me. You can handle Luthor on your own, right?"

Bruce didn't bother answering that. "Robin?" he asked instead.

It shrugged. "Sure," it said. "Why not. I'll introduce him to Gordon."

Bruce didn't like it, but they were wasting time. "All right," he said. "You can go."

Robin jumped once in excitement, saying, "Yes!" It looked up at Kent. "Can we fly? I want to—"

"Robin," Bruce said, stern.

It swallowed and managed to stand still. "Yes, Batman?"

Bruce gave it his best glare. "I'm trusting you. You'll remember all the things we talked about?"

"Yes," Robin said, bouncing up and down. "I've got it!" It turned back to Kent, giving him its best begging-puppy look. "I want to fly. Will you take me flying?"

Kent glanced at Bruce, his expression clearly showing that he was already starting to rethink this plan.

Bruce decided not to have any pity on him. "Check in every twenty minutes over the radio," he ordered, and then turned toward the roof's edge, readying his grapple. He needed to locate Lex, before he got the mysterious radioactive rocks-or-possibly-crystals out of the city. "And whatever you do, don't let him kill anyone!"

With that, Bruce jumped off the roof.

Behind him, Bruce heard Kent say, in a patently uneasy tone, "Wait. Was he talking to you, or me?"

/~*~/


	9. Chapter 9

It wasn't quite the longest night of Bruce's vigilante career to date—that honor went to the six-hour chase through a booby-trapped carnival that had finally ended the Joker's reign of terror last year—but it was close. Ironically, given the lengths to which Lex had gone to mask his trail, tracking down the shipment of radioactive rocks was the least of the night's many endeavors. Now that Bruce knew what he was looking for, a couple of meaningful conversations with the right people led him to suspicious paperwork for a small shipment labeled _Property of LexCorp_ , and then it was just a matter of following the trail to the right delivery truck—which turned out to be a private armored car, instead—and obtaining a license plate number. It took no more than an hour.

On a normal night, the next step would be a tedious search through the city's many traffic cameras, possibly with an assist from Gordon if he could fabricate a reason for the cops to pull over a seemingly-random vehicle. Instead, Lex's attempt to distract Bruce with city-wide chaos actually helped him track the route almost immediately, as non-emergency, non-getaway cars (save for the occasional foolhardy news van) had more or less cleared off the streets within the first hour. With the added complication of Lex wanting to oversee the delivery personally, and therefore his expensive car trailing behind the armored one like a neon flashing sign, it was almost too easy. He caught them not far outside the city limits, on one of the smaller, older, less-used highways that ran between Gotham and Metropolis.

It only took a few surgical taps on the back bumper to knock the armored car into the highway's centerline cement dividers, stopping it cold. Lex had hired private security, of course, and his impressively-trained bodyguard climbed out of the trailing limousine to assist, but none of them made it very far after pouring out onto the street. Bruce simply keyed one of the Batmobile's console switches, releasing a cloud of the nastier cousin to tear gas, and waited for them to begin flailing around and dropping to the pavement.

When the cloud dissipated enough that it wouldn't impair him, Bruce abandoned the safety of his car and made quick work of the disoriented security personnel using a combination of quick, brutal punches and a handful of zip ties. He spared a moment to be sure none of them were carrying emergency inhalers or anything that would indicate breathing problems, since the tear gas tended to exacerbate those conditions, but saw no sign of anyone having an unexpectedly poor reaction. It was always a risk—so was punching someone unconscious, if they'd had a prior concussion, and sometimes even if they didn't—but Bruce tried to mitigate it where possible. Especially recently, given his many conversations about ethics and doing serious damage to someone just because it was easier or more convenient. The extra three minutes it took to check might save someone's life, someday.

Breaking into the armored back of the car took considerably longer—impressive as his utility belt was, he wasn't in the habit of carrying around power saws or diamond-bit drills—but his enhanced strength and the sharp end of a bat-shaped throwing star served well enough to slice through the metal wall. Again, Lex's overly-complicated plan turned to Bruce's advantage; on a different night, Lex might have been able to summon police with the story that Batman was robbing him. That would have shortened Bruce's timetable, perhaps even forcing him to flee before he sawed through the car's metal frame. Tonight, though, no cops were coming, no matter how rich the person calling might be.

 _Too smart for your own good, Luthor,_ Bruce thought, almost viciously. After years of playing the dumb playboy around Lex, it was surprisingly cathartic to steal something from him right under his nose. It got better when Bruce lifted out the small box—quickly popping it open to see several glowing green rocks, just as expected—and Lex made the mistake of finally opening his door. He didn't get out of the limousine entirely, just stood up with one foot on the pavement and the other remaining inside, balancing with one hand braced on the door.

"Do you know what you're doing?" Lex asked, visibly seething. He wasn't foolish enough to try to stop Bruce, but it was clear that staying even halfway in the relative safety of his car was a struggle for him. He wasn't used to not getting his way, but he was also smart enough to know that he wasn't a match for the Batman without his expensive private security around him. "Those are very rare, and they could be the only chance we have of controlling—"

Bruce silenced him mid-sentence with a punch right to the nose, somewhat sadistically amused at both the utterly shocked look on Lex's face and the twin streams of red blood pouring down his chin. He'd had daydreams about doing that in a half-dozen different conference rooms. It was a shame that Lex couldn't ever know that it was him, under the cowl.

"Next time, stay in the car," Bruce growled, disguising his voice even more than usual, just to be safe. He leaned into the open door, looking down to where Lex had fallen back against the plush leather seats. "Or better yet, stay out of Gotham altogether."

Bruce slammed the car door closed, stowed the box of green rocks in the Batmobile's secure cargo compartment, and floored the accelerator back toward the city. _That_ was when the long part of the night began.

Bruce's first instinct was to track down the escaped Arkham inmates, knowing how dangerous they each could be if he let them roam free again. Unfortunately, none of them—with the possible exception of the Joker—was likely to wreak any immediate havoc, unlike the in-progress robberies going on all over town. It would take at least a few days for even the most opportunistic to plan any real trouble, and lives were already in danger elsewhere. Even Kent, with his just-barely-subsonic travel speeds, couldn't be everywhere at once. The Arkham breakout, disastrous as it had been, was a problem for tomorrow.

"Where am I needed?" Bruce asked his radio, and followed Alfred's directions to the nearest crisis.

/~*~/

The next several hours would later register as little more than a blur in Bruce's memory: an endless string of dark buildings and armed gunmen, desperate cops and EMT's and firemen, hoarse shouting, the metallic taste of blood in the air, and the acrid bite of smoke and tear gas in the back of his throat. There was barely time to breathe between fights, just a constant stream of violence with brief interludes of running along rooftops or speeding down streets to the next emergency.

Bruce was forced to pick up new supplies three separate times, nearly depleting his stashes around the city. His first priority when things settled would have to be replenishing his stocks of smoke pellets, knockout gas, electric shock darts, restraints, and throwing stars. Even Robin, who tended to rely on weapons and what it called "tricks" less than Bruce did, admitted during one of its regular radio check-ins that it had used up everything it typically carried in its glamoured utility belt. (Bruce had asked it once how something that was, in Robin's own words, _not-real_ could carry around objects that were; he'd gotten only a shrug and a smile in response.)

To be fair, the reason Robin was using up its supplies was simply that, with Kent's assistance, Robin was hitting more sites than Bruce could manage on his own. Bruce forced himself to be grateful for that, rather than resenting it. What took the Batman at least ten minutes to accomplish, due to having to sneak in and assess a situation before acting, Kent solved in thirty seconds. _It must be nice,_ Bruce thought, struggling to be wistful rather than jealous, _to just walk straight up to every problem and punch it in the face, never doubting for a second that you_ _'ll win every time._

In any case, they were lucky Kent was willing to help, or the situation would have been dramatically worse.

Three hours in, somewhere in the vicinity of midnight, Bruce ran into Captain Gordon in the aftermath of a nasty hostage situation at a hospital. With too many violent crimes and not enough SWAT teams, Gordon had been torn between tying to storm the place with his regular beat cops and detectives, or trying to negotiate with a handful of incompetent but well-armed drug addicts too far into withdrawal to figure out what they wanted or where to find it. They'd taken over a floor on the south wing roughly an hour before, threatening to shoot patients and late-shift staff alike. Bruce was almost certain that this wasn't part of Bane's carefully negotiated crime spree—it simply wasn't organized enough for that—but rather a case of desperate individuals taking advantage of the situation. That didn't make them any less dangerous.

Bruce had gotten inside with only minutes to spare before Gordon's planned assault, but he had managed to contain the situation before anyone else got hurt. It didn't feel like enough, not with two nurses, an orderly, and a patient who had gone into cardiac arrest from the stress all dead, not to mention an ER doctor busy trying to stitch closed her own gunshot wound. All Bruce could do was memorize the names and faces—intimately aware that they would show up in his nightmares, the next time he got a chance to sleep—and move on.

On his way out, he pulled a startled Gordon into a shadowy, unused corridor, ignoring the man's yelp and subsequent cursing in favor of a quick status update. It was pretty much what he was expecting.

"The Governor's declared a state of emergency," Gordon admitted. He took a moment to drink from a metallic water bottle as his radio squawked half-panicked reports from his belt. "There's talk of sending in the National Guard, if we can't stabilize things in the next few hours. Every cop in the city has been pulled on duty, and people are starting to panic about riots and looting."

"It won't come to that," Bruce said, more confidently than he felt.

"How does something like this even happen?" Gordon demanded. "It's like every single criminal in the city made a pact to attack on the same night. Not to mention Arkham's troubles."

"It's Bane," Bruce told him. "With an impressive amount of funding you'll never be able to conclusively trace back to Lex Luthor."

"Great," Gordon muttered. He removed his glasses for a moment to rub at his red-rimmed eyes. "I'll put out an APB, for all the good it will do. Everybody's too busy to blink right now, let alone launch a manhunt."

"I'll find him," Bruce promised. "Just not tonight."

Gordon huffed out what might have been a bitter laugh. "We're good here," he said, waving a hand at the hospital wing behind him. "I'm going to sweep this place, lock it up for the night, and go find another emergency to handle."

"Be careful," Bruce said.

"Yeah," Gordon said, sounding exhausted. "You, too. And hey, tell the kid and the big guy the same." Something in Gordon's face shifted slightly, momentarily suspicious. "We're just lucky he happened to be in town, I suppose?"

Bruce nodded, albeit uncomfortably. "I think he's on the level," he admitted. "But I'm keeping a close watch on him, just the same."

"Of course," Gordon said, smiling. He looked a little relieved despite himself. "Space aliens, huh? World gets stranger every day."

"You don't know the half of it," Bruce muttered.

Gordon raised his eyebrows, but didn't comment. "Shoo," he said, gesturing for Bruce to leave. "We've both got work to do."

Bruce nodded again and slunk back into the shadows, making his way to the roof. He had just reached the edge when his radio clicked once. It wasn't Alfred this time, but Robin's overly cheerful voice that buzzed in his ear with another twenty-minute update.

 _"We've finished the south side, all the way up to the river. Three banks, one museum—nobody there by the time we made it—a vet clinic, and a car-chase on Madison. Sixteen bad guys apprehended. We're heading northwest now, but there's a fire somewhere near the Fowler building downtown that he wants to put out first."_

"Noted," Bruce said. "Keep on your current track; I'm sweeping the east side just north of the river." He hesitated, but decided to pass on Gordon's sentiment. "And be careful."

Robin's radio clicked twice in acknowledgment and went silent. After the first five or six check-ins, they'd gotten bored with giving each other detailed breakdowns. Bruce hated to even think how long tonight's mission log was going to end up being, once it was all over. He'd already done more in the last few hours than he'd typically do in a week's worth of patrols.

Still standing at the roof's edge, Bruce flipped his radio to the Cave channel. "Alfred?" he prompted into his microphone. "The hospital's secure. What do you have for me?"

 _"The police are currently pinned down in a shootout with a half-dozen hostiles,"_ Alfred's voice said, still calm and measured and without the slightest hint of fatigue. Bruce wondered absently if he was cheating, and sipping coffee while he listened to the police scanner. _"Gotham National Bank, Thirty-First Street."_

"I'm on it," Bruce said, freeing his grapple.

Gordon was right. The night wasn't over, and there was still work to do.

/~*~/

By somewhere between three and four in the morning, most of the city had finally been quieted. The initial wave of robberies and attacks were long over, either completed successfully or interrupted. Most of the last hour had been spent breaking up opportunistic secondary crimes, people taking advantage of the chaos, including a few attempts at looting just as Gordon had predicted. There were still organized criminals making trouble in pockets here and there, just enough to keep the exhausted police from getting any rest, but for the first time in hours the wailing of sirens was sporadic rather than constant background noise.

After handling the latest situation—it had been a gang of teenagers armed only with baseball bats and crowbars who had decided that the cops were too busy to stop them from ransacking a major electronics store; they had been so terrified of seeing the Bat in person that he hadn't needed anything more than a disappointed glare to send them scurrying home—Bruce took a momentary break to catch his breath. It was mostly metaphorical, thanks to the eight hours of sleep Robin and Alfred had foisted on him the night before, but after running from crisis to crisis almost entirely nonstop since an hour after nightfall, his mind needed a few minutes to stand still and think, even if his body didn't.

Naturally, he picked a place where an alarm was still blaring, because there was no point in wasting his time even if he wasn't going to be fighting. According to Alfred, this particular art gallery had reported an exterior window breach some twenty minutes earlier, and nobody had yet responded. He was fully expecting the perpetrator to be long gone by now; he'd do a brief sweep of the building and then rest for five minutes before heading to the last few of the night's emergencies.

Of course, the universe delighted in upsetting his expectations. As soon as Bruce slipped through the open window, he froze. He could hear movement nearby, along with the steady, ocean-wave sound of someone breathing in and out.

Bruce scowled. "Show yourself," he said, in his sternest Batman-voice. "I'm not in the mood for games tonight."

"Oh, no," a voice said, sultry to the point of parody, and then going quite a bit past it. "That's a real shame, because I'm fantastic at them."

Bruce stood from his crouch, fighting the urge to sigh. "An art gallery. I should have known. Were all the museums tonight you, as well?"

Selina dropped from the ledge she'd been hiding on, landing with prefect grace next to him. She was wearing her outrageous thieving gear, complete with the ears she'd added after Bruce had made the mistake of calling her a "cat burglar" once as a joke. When Bruce had tried to talk her out of it, she'd argued that somebody who dressed like a giant bat really had no ground to stand on judging anyone else's fashion choices, and he'd grudgingly dropped it. Besides, he'd never admit it, but skintight black leather really was a nice look on her. Not that he'd ever seen a look that wasn't, up to and including mussed hair and one of his ratty college t-shirts.

Bruce didn't see any suspicious items on her person, or anywhere she could possibly be hiding a stolen painting or sculpture given the fit of the leather, but he knew better than to underestimate her resourcefulness. He couldn't spot any lock-picks or tools, either, and he _knew_ she was carrying those. "What did you take?" he asked bluntly.

She shrugged, letting the motion ripple all the way through her body in another overly-exaggerated parody of seduction. "Darling, you know me," she said, smiling coyly. Her voice was a good half-octave lower than normal, somehow husky and smooth all at once. "I do love to window shop. But nothing caught my eye." She fluttered her eyelashes at him, dropping her chin so that she could look up through them. She was shorter than she usually appeared, given that she'd sacrificed her spiked heels for speed and silence. "You can search me, if you want."

Bruce rolled his eyes, wondering if she could read his body language well enough to tell despite the white lenses in his mask. It wasn't as if Selina Kyle was ever exactly demure, even when she was playing the wide-eyed innocent, but as Catwoman she had a tendency to trip over the line into cartoonish. He'd even called her Jessica Rabbit once, trying to make a point, but she'd only doubled down on the ridiculous voice and outlandish poses. It was simply a part of her carefully-assembled persona, at this point, something she did without even thinking about it. Bruce had stopped letting it affect him ages ago. He found the real Selina—the one she only showed him when they were alone and unmasked, and even then only sometimes—to be much more alluring than the sexy-villain version, anyway.

"Not tonight," Bruce said, shaking his head. "You should go home. The city's not completely quiet, yet."

Selina smiled again, and it was marginally more sincere this time. "It never is."

"Not like this," he insisted. He hesitated briefly, but he knew he'd have to ask her eventually. It might as well be now, rather than having to track her down again. She wasn't always the easiest person to find, even for him. "When was the last time you spoke to Ivy?"

Confusion rippled across Selina's face at the seemingly-abrupt shift in conversation. "Pam?" she clarified. "I tried to get in to see her a few times, but the doctors at Arkham always had her in isolation."

"She escaped tonight," Bruce said. "Along with a half-dozen others."

"What? How?"

"Bane," Bruce said. He didn't elaborate, but then again, he didn't really need to. Bane's reputation was only marginally more dangerous than the man himself, as Bruce had found out for himself six months earlier.

Some of the Catwoman persona melted away, leaving Selina standing a little straighter. "What exactly are you asking me?"

"There's a chance she'll contact you," Bruce said, keeping his words brisk and professional. "If she does—"

"No," Selina interrupted, her voice tight and brittle. "I'm not helping you put her back in prison. She's my friend."

Bruce wasn't entirely unsympathetic—he probably should have put Selina herself in prison some time ago, and there were days when he wasn't entirely sure why he hadn't—but his voice, when he spoke, was firm. "She's dangerous," he said.

"So am I," she said, almost as if she'd read his mind. "So are you, for that matter."

"It's not the same," Bruce insisted. "Just because her motivations are understandable doesn't make her methods acceptable. She'll hurt people, given the chance. If you have the opportunity to help me stop her, but you choose not to, then you'll be partially culpable for the damage she does."

Selina watched him for a moment, eyebrows raised above the delicate goggles of her costume.

Bruce didn't blush—he was much too in control of his physical responses for that—but he did let his head drop a little, self-deprecating. "Sorry," he said, and his voice was much closer to Bruce Wayne than it was to Batman, in that moment. "Moralizing speeches have become something of an occupational hazard, lately."

One side of Selina's mouth twitched upward, a hapless little smirk. "I've heard the rumors," she admitted. "Are you really trying to tame a demon?"

Bruce shrugged. Robin might not be a demon in the religious sense of the word—it wasn't evil, just indifferent, without any ethics to restrain its impulses—but the word wasn't entirely inaccurate, either. Given the way bargains usually ended, according to his mother's book, Bruce wouldn't be at all surprised if Robin's people were the myth originators for "making a deal with the Devil." He had never paid much mind to such things, but perhaps Bruce was fortunate that he'd forfeited only his life, rather than his immortal soul.

"Do I ever get to meet him?" Selina asked. "He can't be _that_ dangerous, if you're letting him interact with civilians unsupervised."

Bruce felt a momentary urge to say _Superman_ _'s babysitting at the moment,_ but he suppressed it. He still wasn't entirely sure who was keeping an eye on who, in that scenario; he was just glad that so far they had both stayed relatively out of trouble. Assuming Robin's reports had been accurate, of course.

"Robin is incredibly dangerous," he said instead, his voice intentionally flat. "But for the moment, it's under my control."

Selina's dark eyes narrowed. "That sounds suspiciously temporary."

"It is."

"How long—" She stopped herself as soon as she began, obviously recalling their last in-depth conversation, at the benefit several weeks earlier. "Eleven months."

"Less than nine, by now," Bruce reminded her.

"What happens then?"

 _Then I will be free_ , a memory of Robin's boyish voice whispered in the back of Bruce's skull, gleeful and cold. _And a **river** of your blood will not protect you from me._

Bruce swallowed. "Hopefully," he said, "there won't be any collateral damage."

Something in Selina's face went instantly soft and shocked, and Bruce knew at once that talking to her at all had been a mistake. She was remarkably intuitive, and she'd been able to read him like an open book almost since the day they had met, when they were barely out of their teens and Batman had been just a hazy, half-formed idea in the back of his head. It was impossible to keep secrets from her, no matter how hard he tried.

"Bruce," she said, gently.

"No names in the field," Bruce snapped instinctively, even though they were alone. He made a note to have Alfred check for security footage, in case he needed to delete it later.

Selina didn't acknowledge the mistake, or the rebuke. Her hand reached up to cup his exposed jaw below the cowl, warm against his skin even through the thin leather glove that she wore to prevent leaving fingerprints. "What have you gotten yourself into now?" she whispered, lightly pressing her fingertips into the soft muscle at the side of his neck.

Bruce curled his gauntleted fingers around her wrist near his chin, but he didn't push her hand away. "I did what I needed to do," he said. "And I'll deal with the consequences, whatever they might be."

Selina sighed, disappointed. "You have _such_ a martyr complex," she said, shaking her head. Her fingers shifted against his skin, restless, and he knew that if he'd been unmasked she would be tracing them over his ear and through the short strands of black hair at the base of his neck. Robbed of the opportunity by the presence of his cowl, she just let her hand open and close, running the tips of her fingers up and down his jawline. "There are people who care about you, you know. I think you forget that, sometimes."

Bruce gripped her wrist tighter, finding her pulse point with two fingers and reveling briefly in the steady, sure rhythm. She'd be able to feel his pulse too, beneath his jaw. Her fingers stilled, and for a long time they stood there, touching only at those two places, counting the beats of each other's hearts. Bruce fancied that maybe they were beating in time, but he knew better. Even metaphorically, that wasn't who they were, not to each other. Maybe not at all.

"Tell me," Selina said, quietly.

Bruce closed his eyes. He didn't want her pity, or her righteous anger. Alfred's reaction had been upsetting enough, and even though the issue had been mostly dropped, every now and then Bruce could still see the horror lying in wait behind those familiar blank expressions. Bruce never wanted to see a look like that on Selina's features, but now that she was interested, there'd be no knocking her off the scent. And he never _had_ been able to lie to her, not convincingly. He reopened his eyes.

"I made a bargain," Bruce said. He had to force the words out, one by one. "With Robin. To heal my spine."

Selina hid her shock well, but Bruce saw it flicker through her anyway. "So the rumors are true," she said. "He isn't human." Her hand went slack, and she dropped it from his face. "And you _were_ hurt. It wasn't an act."

He kept hold of her wrist, but he allowed their hands to fall down into the space between them. He smiled. "You really thought I'd fooled you."

"Don't be smug," she said, shaking her head slightly. "It's not attractive on you." Then, like always, she cut straight to the heart of the matter. "Part of the agreement was, what? Training Robin to fight?"

"Not quite," Bruce said evasively. "Mostly it just likes to follow me around, and it thinks the fighting part is fun." He smiled again, a bit crookedly this time. "Honestly, the hardest part is keeping it from killing anyone."

Selina's eyes were sharp. "Including you?" she asked, as if she already knew the answer but was hoping to be wrong.

Bruce's mouth worked for a moment, but nothing came out. Eventually, he sighed. "Not until my year is up," he said, like a consolation prize.

For a moment, her face was blank. Then her eyebrows lifted and her eyes widened, mouth falling open in indignation. "Oh, for the love of—Aren't you supposed to be good at this sort of thing?" She waved her free hand around, almost frantically. "That's a terrible bargain! Don't you negotiate business deals for a living? How are you this bad at it?"

Bruce couldn't help it; he began to chuckle. He wondered what Gordon would have made of that: the Batman, laughing. Even if it was at himself.

"Don't—This isn't funny," Selina snapped. Her face had contracted into a pointed glare. "This is your _life_ we're talking about."

"It's done," he said, shaking his head. "By the time I knew the price, I was in too deep to back out." He squeezed her wrist once, briefly, and finally released it. "It can't be changed now."

"Says who?" Selina demanded.

"Says the immortal, inhuman creature who sealed the bargain," Bruce said. He paused, and then added, "I'm not giving up. Why do you think I'm trying to teach it morals and empathy?"

Selina's look was decidedly unimpressed. "Well, maybe you should start by not calling him 'it,'" she said, scathingly.

A frisson of unease crept across the skin between Bruce's shoulder-blades. "It's not human," he reminded her.

"That doesn't make him not a person." She crossed her arms. "If you're calling him 'it,' then you're treating him like an object, consciously or not. A thing, a tool to be used."

"Tools," Bruce said, "are typically better behaved."

"Well, _you_ _'ve_ clearly never used a computer," Selina said. "How do you expect him to learn empathy, if you don't have any for him?"

That hit a little harder than Bruce wanted to admit. "It's more complicated than that," he insisted. _Or have you already forgotten that it_ _'s going to_ ** _kill_** _me?_

Selina just watched him for a moment. "Somehow, it always is, with you."

Bruce opened his mouth to make another argument, but he was interrupted by the clicking of his radio. Grateful for the distraction, he turned slightly away from Selina in a show of privacy, tapping his microphone to open the channel.

 _"We finished the last sweep, with only one incident,"_ Robin's voice said in his ear. Where before it had been chipper and excited, it now sounded oddly melancholy, a child who wasn't done playing but who was watching someone take away all the toys. _"Alfred says the police scanners are quiet. I think we're done for the night."_ There was a short giggle, not quite as eerie and threatening as normal, but odd just the same over the mechanical speaker. _"Apparently he needs as much sleep as a human would. He's been complaining about having to be at work in less than five hours."_

"Fine," Bruce said. He could feel Selina's eyes on him, even though she was now behind him. "Tell our guest he can go home, then meet me where we split up."

There was a pause, instead of the double-click acknowledgment he was expecting.

 _"He wants to know what happened with the rocks,"_ Robin said. It hummed absently, like it was listening to someone the microphone couldn't pick up, and then added, _"If you seal them inside a lead container, he can carry them. He's thinking the bottom of the ocean, maybe."_

Bruce felt his jaw clench. "They'll be safe with me, for now," he said, uneasy and hoping it didn't come through in his tone. "Tell him to get some sleep. I'll call him tomorrow to sort it out."

 _"Okay,"_ Robin said. Another pause, much briefer this time, and then, _"He says bye."_

Bruce barely had time to deactivate his microphone before he heard the deep, rattling boom of something breaking the sound barrier as it left the city. Next to them, the loose window that had been their entry point shook in its frame. Apparently, Kent thought that getting home a few minutes faster was worth the disruption to Gotham's citizens, many of whom weren't sleeping anyway. Bruce wasn't sure he could hold it against him, not given the way Kent had come through for them tonight. Bruce owed him one, even if he didn't want to admit it.

Half a second later, the air rippled next to Bruce's elbow, coalescing into Robin's small shape.

"Are we really going straight home?" it asked immediately. "Because there's at _least_ an hour left before dawn and I've been cooped up all week and—" It broke off, spinning around to face Selina as if it had just noticed her presence. Its yellow-and-black cape swirled around its boots with the sudden motion. "Oh, hi," it said, grinning brightly. "I remember you."

Selina took a small, measured step backwards. Bruce had a feeling that if he'd still been listening to her pulse, it would have just skyrocketed. Still, her voice was calm when she said, "Hello. Have we met?"

"Yes, but I was invisible," Robin said casually.

Bruce turned, subtly placing himself between Robin and Selina so that their attention was on him, rather than each other. They were standing close enough that he could have reached out with one hand and touched Selina's shoulder, while the other could have rested on the crown of Robin's head. "I told you to meet me at the factory, not come straight to me," he said, giving Robin a stern look.

Robin shrugged its armored shoulders, not fazed by the rebuke. "I wanted to talk you out of going home. Can we play tag instead?" It rocked forward and back on the heels of its green boots, eyes flicking once to where Selina stood on Bruce's other side. "She can play, too, I guess. If she can keep up."

Selina's eyebrows started climbing upwards again, but the initial fear and defensiveness was already fading from her stance. Bruce could almost see the gears working behind her dark eyes. She'd been advocating to treat Robin like a human, even though it wasn't one, and Bruce knew firsthand how deceptive the child-like appearance could be when Robin turned on its boyish charm. It had certainly worked on Gordon, and Alfred for that matter.

"I'm not very good at tag," Selina said. She crouched down so that she was on Robin's eye-level, peering around Bruce's hip. "It's not really my game." Something mischievous touched the corner of her mouth. "Do you know how to play poker?"

"What?" Bruce said immediately. He glanced at Selina. "No," he said. He turned to Robin. "We're not playing tag. Or anything else. We need to debrief." He swung back around to Selina. " _No_ ," he repeated, just as she was opening her mouth again. He loved her—he really did—but ten minutes with her would erase all the progress Bruce had made with Robin on ethics and morals. _Especially_ if she taught it poker.

Selina smiled at whatever look was on his face, standing back up. She even raised her hands and shook her head, both literally and figuratively backing off as she stepped toward the still-open window. "All right," she said, intentionally disarming. "I suppose I've had enough fun tonight, anyway."

Bruce turned as she passed him, catching her forearm lightly with one hand. "What did you steal?" he asked. "Really."

"Nothing that will be missed by anyone who needs it," she said, somehow putting the low rumble of a purr under her words. "Unless you want to tie me up me after all?" she added, giving him another over-the-top, sultry look.

He sighed. "Go home," he said, and released her arm. "If Ivy—"

"No promises," she said instantly. Then she softened. "But I'll keep my eyes open."

"You always do."

There was a pregnant sort of pause, then, before she arched her spine and pressed her lips to his, warm and soft and inviting. For all the seductiveness of her pose and attitude, the kiss itself was sweet and genuine. Bruce let himself get lost in it for a moment, steadying himself with one hand on the back of her neck, holding her close.

When the kiss ended, she lifted up to her toes in order to put her mouth by his ear. For the second time that night, Bruce lamented the presence of the cowl that kept her lips or the warmth of her breath from touching his skin. "If I can help …" She didn't finish the thought, but he knew what she meant.

"I'll let you know," Bruce said.

Selina stepped back, smiling at him. "You'd better."

Then she was gone, slipping over the windowsill not unlike her namesake cat, disappearing into the night.

"Huh," Robin said. Its arms were crossed over its chest, and it was staring at the spot where Selina had been, perplexed. "Was that another mortal sign-of-affection thing, like a hug?"

Bruce choked on nothing but air, passing it off as a cough. "That is _not_ a talk I'm prepared to have right now. Or ever, come to think of it."

Robin's eyes narrowed. "I'll have to ask Alfred," it said, like a threat.

Bruce tried to imagine how that conversation would go, and—thankfully—failed. "Just … make sure I'm at the office, please," he said, uncomfortable. Then he pointed to the open window. "Home, now. We have reports to write and half a dozen villains to find, preferably _before_ they cause any trouble."

/~*~/

In the end, the long-term ramifications of what the press was calling "Crime Night"—an unimaginative name, and one which the rest of the country scoffed at; wasn't _every_ night in Gotham City a crime night?—were relatively few.

First, and surprisingly, the body count was nowhere near as high as Bruce had been expecting. There had been deaths, of course, and Bruce understood more than most how a single loss could ripple outward to affect an entire community of people, but given that the city had very nearly been a war zone for several hours the casualties were remarkably low. The botched drug raid three months ago, the one that had pushed Bruce into a head-space that made summoning a fae creature a viable option, had been worse in terms of raw numbers. There were only a couple of incidents, out of hundreds that night, that had involved the use of deadly force.

The theories behind why were as varied as they were speculative. Maybe Bane had made non-lethal methods a stipulation in his planning—although that wouldn't account for the opportunistic crimes that had jumped on the bandwagon once the night got into full swing. Maybe the lessons learned from three months ago, and the new tactics, equipment, and training the police were using in response, had made a significant difference—the Mayor and Commissioner Loeb were rather fond of that one, it being an election year, despite the fact that no precinct had actually been given any new training or equipment. Maybe the oppressive summer heat, even in the middle of the night, had made everyone sluggish and lazy and slow to respond with unnecessary violence—except, of course, in the cases where it hadn't.

Bruce had his own explanation, one the press was circling around without ever outright claiming. Every paper, news station, and tabloid magazine in the city was chock full of articles and segments on Superman lending a hand that night, but nobody ever came right out and said that his presence was what had saved, or spared, so many lives. Gothamites were a proud bunch, and ever-so-slightly isolationist; it wouldn't do to credit another city's hero with their salvation. They smiled for the cameras and politely thanked Superman for flying over to assist, but they always made it clear that it was _just_ assistance. The real work had been done by the GCPD, Gotham Fire, the city's many EMT's, and—if pressed—her own, very much _one of them_ , vigilante.

Anything else would be too much like admitting that they had needed outside help, that they couldn't take care of themselves. Anything else would be saying that idealistic, sunny Metropolis with its cheerful people and naive disposition was somehow better than Gotham's shadows, gargoyles, and cynicism. That simply wouldn't do.

Therefore, secondly—and somewhat less surprisingly—the city latched onto Robin, instead.

There had been stories floating around about Robin ever since that first, blurry photo. The boy in that picture, though, hadn't been wearing a costume. Most of the people who had seen Robin since it started wearing its bright colors were criminals, not the sort to do street interviews with reporters outside book stores and cafes. There had been the occasional victim or bystander, but verbal testimony only went so far—and most of those hadn't gotten a name or moniker out of Robin, even if they'd tried to speak to it. The rest of the rumors about Robin had been of the Devil-Child variety, and no self-respecting news outlet was reporting about demons. Even the most outrageous of the tabloids hadn't gone quite that far, even though they'd called the Bat a demon once or twice before; presumably there was some hesitation about making a kid a target for overly-zealous religious fanatics.

After Crime Night, that all changed. Robin had spent hours flitting from crisis to crisis at Superman's side, and despite Kent's fast pace—or maybe because of it, since they could afford the delays—they had stopped to talk to reporters and onlookers regularly. To Bruce's great relief, Kent fielded most of the questions, smoothly navigating the press with the ease of someone who had been on the other side of the microphone, too. He was protective of Robin in front of the cameras, often standing with his arm around Robin's shoulders or letting it hide in the shadow of his red cape. When someone did ask Robin a question, it waited for Kent to nod before it answered, which made Bruce think that they'd actually discussed interview protocol at some point that night. Bruce started to think that maybe Kent's day-job wasn't just a cover for his heroics, but an actual talent of his.

The footage was piecemeal, no more than twenty or thirty seconds per segment, each one recorded at one of the Crime Night trouble spots that had attracted a reporter who was less worried about risking their life than they were about getting a good story. Most of it was the same questions repeated over and over, from different voices, but each had its own flavor or twist or angle to play. In the grand scheme of things, it wasn't much—Robin had said maybe two-dozen words on camera all night, most of those yes or no answers, or stating its name—but it was enough. Gotham now knew that Batman had a partner, a kid in red, yellow, and green with a bright smile and too much energy to stand still.

Robin, of course, found the whole thing great fun. "Look!" it would say, every time the news stories began to cycle back around to speculations about itself. "I'm on TV!"

Bruce seriously considered turning off the 24-hour news that he kept on down in the Cave, but he couldn't afford not to know what people were saying. It was like Gordon and the CPS situation all over again, with talking heads from everywhere in the country weighing in on the idea of a kid vigilante, and how that could affect childhood development and long-term growth, or the morality of exposing a child to real violence. Gotham-based pundits tended to take it more or less in stride—the boy called Robin looked healthy, he had clearly been well-trained, and when the city was as its most dangerous the Batman had asked Superman to look after him for the night, to protect him in a way that the Bat couldn't—and it wasn't like Gotham was the safest city in which to raise a child anyway, no matter what their hobbies were.

The national news, on the other hand, was _outraged_. By the end of the first week, Bruce was half-waiting for the inevitable lynch mob of concerned parents and child psychologists. Things only began to calm down when, for the second time, he found himself owing Kent (or more precisely, Superman) a favor.

It started with this: Bruce didn't do interviews. It wasn't in Batman's nature, and it would actually hamper his investigative methods if people could see him clearly, in direct light, having a conversation like a normal person. Part of his power was in his mystery, the shadow in the corner of your eye that could be watching at any moment, ready to strike. He couldn't afford to have the world see him as an ordinary man in a black suit with silly-looking ears. The press had never managed to corner him, and all the photographs of him were distant, dark, and blurry. Half the time, when the paper ran a story on him, they used an artist's rendition, some of which were dramatically more accurate than others.

In the wake of Crime Night, with all the speculations and arguing about Robin, it might have done some good for the public to be able to just talk to Bruce, to ask their questions about Robin's situation. That, after all, had been exactly what Gordon had needed in order to lay his concerns to rest. Without that same opportunity, the fear and anger and worry just kept spreading.

With no way to speak to Batman, and therefore no way to check up on Robin, the press turned to the one other person who might have some insight. He _was_ available to interview, so long as you were willing to go through Lois Lane.

Kent had actually called Bruce the night beforehand, using the new phone-and-scrambler combination that Alfred had set up for him, to get permission. Not just from Bruce, but from Robin, too; Kent made Bruce hand over the phone so that he could talk to Robin directly. Bruce was reminded painfully of Selina's insistence that Bruce try to treat Robin like a person, not a creature, and wondered in a distracted sort of way if Kent would do a better job of teaching Robin empathy than Bruce himself had managed.

 _Kent_ _'s not human, either,_ a stubborn part of Bruce's psyche complained.

The answering voice sounded very much like Selina's: _And what does that say about **you**?_

The story itself broke the next day, in just about every major news outlet on the east coast. People tore Kent's answers apart, picking and choosing the phrases that they most agreed or disagreed with to make a point, as people are wont to do—but the irrefutable fact of the matter was that Superman had gone on public record as endorsing the idea to the world. People stopped debating _whether_ Robin should exist, and starting debating _how much_ the child should be allowed to do. With just a couple of paragraphs, Kent shifted public opinion in Bruce's favor.

The most-quoted bit of the interview, and the real heart of the matter, was this:

 _We talk a lot about sheltering our children, trying to protect them from the evils in this world. That_ _'s an admirable idea, but it's also unrealistic. Kids aren't dumb, you know. They see a lot more than we give them credit for. The question then becomes not one of shielding them from the darkness, but of equipping them to deal with it. There are a lot of different, equally valid ways to do that, but honestly—teaching them how to fight it directly, where it lives, doesn't seem like the worst choice you could make._

Bruce had read the entire interview transcript three times straight through, after Alfred had not-so-subtly left it on the dinner table for him. When he finished, he slipped down to the Cave and made a phone call. It was evening, so Kent answered with a simple _"Hello,"_ rather than a businesslike, Daily Planet greeting.

Bruce just said, "Thank you."

There was soft sound, not quite a laugh, but something warm and friendly and amused. _"You're welcome,"_ that polite, Midwestern voice said. _"I owed you one, for helping me get rid of the Kryptonite, but I didn't say anything I don't really believe."_

Bruce dry-swallowed. "What _did_ you end up doing with those rocks?" he asked, as evenly as he could manage.

 _"Threw them into the Sun, more or less,"_ Kent said cheerfully. _"They can't hurt me now."_

Bruce had nothing else to say, so he just said, "Good night, Mr. Kent."

 _"You can call me Clark, you know,"_ the voice said, sounding more amused than offended by Bruce's abruptness. _"The rest of my friends do."_

Something caught in the back of Bruce's throat. It had the texture and distinct flavor of guilt. Without conscious effort, his eyes flicked over to the newly lead-lined weapons locker, where the smallest one of the rocks Lex had imported sat in a specially-designed container.

 _"Bruce? You okay?"_

"Goodnight, Clark," he said, and immediately hung up.

/~*~/

While the world's focus was on debating the ethics of children in crime-fighting, Bruce was concentrating on the Arkham breakout. There was still no sign of Bane anywhere in the city—Bruce was starting to think he'd left town after kicking off Crime Night—but that still left the seven escapees to deal with. Bruce had made a priority list, in order of likely damage, with the Joker at the very top by a wide margin. Unfortunately, the same things that made the Joker so dangerous made him somewhat unpredictable, so until he reared his painted head and caused some trouble, Bruce was forced to look elsewhere.

Ivy, theoretically, was next. One particularly virulent fungus could spread through the whole city in a matter of days, if she was inclined to release one. The right vine encouraged to grow at the right spot could weaken a foundation and topple a building. Any one of a dozen poisons or toxins could be introduced to the water or the air filtration system of a skyscraper. If she lost her temper and decided to exterminate humanity for the wrongs they had done to her precious plants, she could rack up quite the casualty count before Bruce could find the right antidote or treatment to stop her.

Luckily, just a few days after the escape, Selina dropped by the Manor at dusk to inform Bruce that Ivy—or Pam, as Selina still called her, despite Ivy's protests that she was no longer the same woman she had once been—had turned up looking for a safe place to stay. According to Selina, Ivy had made some real progress in therapy during her incarceration, and no longer wanted to hurt anyone.

Bruce wasn't sure he believed that, or even if it mattered—she was still technically a fugitive from the law, convicted for attempted murder, and shouldn't be released without a court order—but he took the olive branch for what it was and dropped Ivy to the bottom of his list. Selina promised to keep an eye on her, and to call Bruce the _second_ it looked like she might be ready to cause more trouble. Bruce would drop by to take her back to Arkham once the rest of the escapees had been returned; if her therapy had really taken hold, he might even do it without a fight, and get her properly, legally, released sometime in the future.

That left something of a jumble in the middle of his list. Killer Croc was the most physically dangerous, if he lost control and attacked someone. Firefly could cause the most property damage, if he went back to his arsonist ways. Scarecrow was perhaps the _most_ dangerous in this group, but it took time, facilities, and ingredients to brew up fear toxin, so Bruce could afford to let him sit for now. Clayface was problematic not because his criminal enterprises were genius or effective, but because it was so difficult to effectively trap or hold him, so it required extensive planning.

Then there was Dr. Robert "Kirk" Langstrom, the Man-Bat, who was more a victim of his own experiments than a criminal in the first place. He was dangerous the way a wild animal escaped from a zoo might be, with no human intelligence to guide him in his bat-like form. A few nights' worth of traps and tracking, and he'd be the easiest to catch. In theory, anyway.

"This is so boring," Robin suddenly complained, right in the middle of Bruce's lecture on priorities and tactics. "Why do I have to memorize all this stuff?"

"Because," Bruce said, struggling to remain patient, "until now we've only dealt with everyday, street-level crime. If you want to help me go after real villains, then we have to approach it a little differently."

"It's too much information," Robin protested. It was sitting in the second chair that Alfred had produced for the work area of the Cave, legs crossed underneath it on the soft seat. Every so often, it would push off the surface of the desk or the arm of Bruce's chair, and begin furiously spinning around, arms out and head thrown back.

"You're smart," Bruce said. Flattery never hurt, especially when it was true. "You can learn it all. I have faith in you."

Friction eventually slowed Robin's spin, so it pushed off again, in the opposite direction this time. Just watching it made Bruce mildly dizzy.

"Robin," he said. "I need you to focus, please."

Robin shoved the chair into a new spin, even faster than before. "Why?" it asked. When the chair began to slow, it pushed off a second time. _Spin._ "All these names and dates and past crimes." _Spin._ "Known associates, places of residence, prior patterns." _Spin._ "What does it matter?"

Bruce shook off a slight case of sympathetic nausea and turned his head away so that he couldn't watch. "It will help us catch them."

Robin snorted, letting the chair slow to a halt. "Do _you_ have all this stuff memorized?"

Bruce was tempted to say _Yes_ , because he kept a great deal of information in his head, but some of these cases were close to two years old. He knew that if he claimed to have it memorized, Robin would quiz him relentlessly in the hopes of getting him to slip up, and he would eventually. He sighed. "Not quite, but I can reference my files when I need a refresher. You can't."

Robin groaned and threw itself into a particularly violent spin, as if trying to escape from the lesson.

 _Treat him like a person, not a tool,_ a facsimile of Selina's voice whispered in the back of Bruce's skull.

"Do you …" Bruce trailed off, a great deal of hesitancy in his voice. "Would you rather learn how to read?"

Robin grabbed the edge of the desk to halt its chair, mid-spin. "What?"

"If you could read," Bruce said, "then you wouldn't have to memorize all the information. Just the basics. You could pull the details from the records when you needed them."

"Really?" Robin asked, brightening considerably.

"It would be a lot of work," Bruce warned. "It takes concentration, and attention. And you'd have to memorize case files in the meantime, anyway."

"Yes," Robin said, nodding emphatically. "I want to learn to read. Can we start now?"

Bruce sighed, mentally adding another hour of training into his daily schedule. "It's for the best, I suppose," he muttered. "Gordon might have gotten suspicious otherwise, since you're supposed to be in school."

"Not during the summer," Robin said, pushing off into another spin, although much more slowly now, as if the promise of reading lessons had taken the urgency out of it. "The school year runs from September to May, unless there are a lot of snow days that extend it into June. Snow days are fun, because of snowmen and snow angles and snowball fights, and also sleeping late."

Bruce rolled his eyes. "Congratulations, you've officially passed Pretending to Be a Nine-Year-Old 101. Use that one on Gordon, next time you talk to him." He rummaged around for a blank sheet of paper, or at least something unimportant that he could sacrifice the back of to alphabet lessons. After a few moments of fruitless searching, he got up and went over to the printer, snatching a dozen sheets from the tray. It was probably better to start on something without lines, anyway; he'd get Alfred to order some of that ridiculously large-spaced, dotted-line kindergarten paper, for next time.

On his way back to the desk, Robin surprised him by jumping down from its chair and lunging at him.

Bruce almost dropped the small stack of paper, sure that Robin was attacking him for some reason. The bright, almost-manic grin on its face might have had something to do with why. Luckily, it moved too quickly for Bruce to make any overt attempts to defend himself as Robin jumped on him from about three feet away and wrapped its skinny arms around his waist.

Bruce blinked, standing very still. Robin was hugging him.

"Thanks, Bruce," it said, its words distorted slightly because its face was squished into Bruce's stomach. "I didn't think you'd ever let me learn to read!"

"Um," Bruce said, uncomfortable.

Robin tensed. "Am I doing the sign-of-gratitude-and-affection thing wrong?"

 _Treat him like a person._

Bruce wrapped his arms around the parts of Robin he could reach without crouching, which was mostly its shoulders and head. "No," he said. "You're doing it fine."

They stood there for a little while, not moving or speaking.

"How long do hugs last?" Robin asked suddenly.

Bruce fought down a smile. "Basically, until one person starts to wonder that."

"So … we're done?"

"I think so."

"Okay," Robin said, and danced backward. "Let's start! I want to learn how to read."

Bruce sat back down at the desk, and began sketching out a series of capital and lower-case letters. "First," he said, "you have to learn the alphabet. _Then_ you can learn to read."

"Details," Robin said, with a little huff of disapproval.

"See how excited you are when you have to write your own mission reports," Bruce warned. He patted the desk next to his paper, and Robin obediently jumped up to sit on the surface, bare feet swinging in the Cave's chilly air. "Okay. This is a letter 'A'."

Robin traced out the two-inch-high letter with one slender finger, an eager smile on its face.

 _No,_ Bruce thought. If he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.

Robin traced out the two-inch high letter with one slender finger, an eager smile on _his_ face. "A," he repeated.

"Good," Bruce said.

/~*~/


	10. Chapter 10

The height of summer came and went, at least according to the calendar, but the intense heat refused to let up. Gotham suffered from several hundred-degree-plus afternoons over the next month, including a stretch of four days in a row that prompted the Mayor to institute extra precautions for the Labor Day parade downtown, in fear of heat stroke or exhaustion among the crowd. The spell was broken periodically by a heavy thunderstorm, but in the aftermath the pavement steamed as the water evaporated and the temperatures climbed back into the eighties or nineties, even as the sun was setting. The overnight lows were categorically higher than average as well, leaving Bruce feeling like he was trapped in a steam sauna inside the armor. He knew that six months from now, when his fingers and toes were going numb from single-digit temperatures at night, he'd be thinking back fondly of the summer—but for now, it was miserable.

Robin didn't seem to be as affected, although that might have been because his suit was an illusion rather than several layers of reinforced Kevlar. Or, perhaps, the novelty of reading lessons was still overshadowing anything else. For whatever reason, though, Robin was irrepressibly happy for weeks on end, bouncing around the Manor grounds in spite of the heavy, humid air and burning sun, chasing squirrels at the edge of the woods or snatching tiny fish out of the slow-moving creek in the southwest corner of the property. Bruce was temporarily uneasy, until he confirmed that Robin was not killing anything, but rather catching the animals for the sheer joy of the challenge and then immediately releasing them to go chase something else.

"It's rather like watching a new puppy," Alfred had admitted once, looking through a large window in the sitting room. "So much energy."

Bruce had glanced up from his newspaper to follow Alfred's gaze. Outside, Robin was dangling upside down by his knees from a tree-branch, a good fifteen feet off the ground, swinging back and forth and—apparently—holding a spirited conversation with a black and white woodpecker that was staring intently at him from a lower branch. It wouldn't have seemed that strange, albeit monumentally dangerous for a normal child, save for the fact that the little bird occasionally chirped back, as if it understood him.

"Puppies," Bruce said, with a wry twist to his mouth, "eventually wear themselves out and _sleep_ , at some point."

Alfred conceded the point with a slight tilt of his shoulders. "Maybe he's getting it out of his system now, so that he can sit still at dinner."

Bruce didn't think that was likely to happen, but he left Alfred with his illusions intact and went back to his paper. He found a local fluff piece about an old, reopening diner and set it aside for Robin's daily reading lesson. They'd progressed from the alphabet to basic sentences in a remarkably short time, but with a distinct lack of children's books laying around the Manor Bruce had been forced to improvise. He would start Robin on old mission reports by the end of the week, if his progress continued at this rate.

Reading wasn't the only thing Robin picked up quickly, either. Prior to the breakout at Arkham, Robin had been exposed mostly to street crime or the occasional gang-related activity, which required reacting in the moment to a situation already in progress. There wasn't a great deal of planning ahead that could be done, if you weren't sure what the city was going to throw at you on any given night. (Bruce's solution, of course, was to plan for _everything_ , which was more a product of his own need for control than actually useful, and he knew it.) With real villains to chase, a different approach was needed, and Robin finally got the opportunity to showcase some real problem-solving skills for the first time.

It was just after Labor Day. To Bruce's surprise, the parade had gone off without a hitch, and the rest of that week remained quiet all around. It made him nervous, like knowing there was a deadly spider in the room but being unable to find it. A holiday parade was exactly the sort of public, family-friendly activity he'd expect the Joker to ruin, but the clown was a no-show. With Bane having vanished—from the city, if not from Bruce's thoughts—the Joker had to be Bruce's first priority, but ever since the Arkham breakout there had been no sign of him, either. What could the Joker be planning that could keep his attention for the better part of a month?

Then a string of robberies and break-ins occurred over a period of several days, linked only by the fact that the thief had gotten past fingerprint locks, retinal scanners, and voice print ID's without triggering any alarms or leaving any sign of tampering in the systems. In each case, the records indicated that an authorized person—one of them actually the company CEO—had been the culprit. Even the cameras agreed, in the locations that had them.

"Clayface?" Robin asked, when Bruce showed him a copy of the video feed that Gordon had procured for them. It showed a pharmaceutical rep copying proprietary information from the secure file vault, while on another screen a different video with the same time stamp showed the same person standing in line at a gas station convenience store on the way home from work.

"Clayface," Bruce agreed. "He must have picked up some new skills in Arkham—he couldn't copy fine details like fingerprints or retina patterns, before. Just visible features."

Robin frowned and reached out, touching the computer monitor with the tip of one index finger. "Does he have to copy from a person?" he asked. The screen flickered, and Bruce's enhanced sense of smell picked up the slightest hint of ozone, like a lightning strike. A small blue spark jumped from the screen to Robin's finger, and he hissed at it in response, like a warning. The machine beeped once and then stilled. "The computer keeps pictures—that's how it matches them to the people, right? So maybe he could look close enough at those to see?"

Bruce thought for a moment. "He's copied actors from film before. I don't see why he couldn't copy from a computer file." He slid his rolling chair across to the recent-events filing cabinet, and began pulling reports. "If we can figure out how he's getting access to the computers, we can tell which places he's prepped to hit."

"We'll have his target list," Robin agreed. He grinned. "Then we just have to get there first."

Of course, finding Clayface wasn't the only problem; he was almost impossible to keep in custody. Bruce spent the better part of an hour explaining the difficulties involved in trapping a person who could more or less melt into a puddle and slide under a locked door, let alone out of handcuffs or through bars. They couldn't knock him out, either, because the fluid nature of his natural form absorbed most impacts and shrugged off all the knockout gases Bruce had tried—not that Bruce wanted to gamble on the unconsciousness lasting long enough to get him back to his specially-designed cell in Arkham, anyway.

Once they located Clayface's next target—a chemistry lab doing medical research—it became a matter of stakeouts and planning. Robin was confident that he would be able to spot Clayface, even if he was wearing a different face. He couldn't satisfactorily explain how, but he said he'd be able to smell the molecular breakdown in Carlo's cells, the same way he could smell old, cold crystal on Clark even after twenty-five years on this planet. (He tried to teach Bruce, but nothing came of it except a few sneezing fits, a dubious look from Clark, and Alfred's quiet head-shake.)

It was during the second long night of watching the soon-to-be-robbed chemistry lab parking lot that Robin came up with the plan—one so simple, and so obvious in hindsight, that Bruce was actually mad at himself for missing it: They could use the lab facility itself as a temporary prison, by activating the bio-hazard containment system. A room designed to prevent the spread of bacteria or dangerous substances would have no trouble keeping Clayface inside, at least long enough for the police to arrive with the airtight holding tank they'd used to transport him to and from his court hearings.

Granted, Robin hadn't come right out and said, "I know! Let's use the chemistry lab for its bio-hazard containment system," probably because he didn't know what some of those words meant until Bruce explained the plan. But it _had_ been Robin who had talked Bruce around to the idea.

What Robin had actually said was, "Somebody has to have a way of keeping liquids or gases locked inside a room. Like the Scarecrow guy! Didn't you say that all those chemicals and toxins and gases he uses can be really dangerous?"

Bruce had made the leap to the bio-hazard containment system from there, which made the actual capture of Clayface almost absurdly easy. Robin identified the body Carlo was using, Bruce maneuvered him into a secure lab, and Robin hit the angry red _CONTAMINANT!_ button. Then it was just a matter of baby-sitting Clayface, ignoring his threats and insults until Gordon got there and they could slip away.

Using details of the situation to theorize a criminal's methods, and then extrapolating data from one problem to help solve a different one—both of those marked a significant step forward in Robin's abilities. Gordon had seemed strangely proud of him, too, when Robin told the story to him a few days after the fact. Robin was practically beaming, running his words together in excitement—although Bruce suspected that had been prompted more by the need to distract Gordon from asking too many questions about the start of the new school year than any real desire to impress him.

Bruce began to think that his half-baked idea to have Robin take over for him, after his death, might not be quite as impossible as it had once sounded. Quietly, without bringing attention to what he was doing, he began to expand Robin's training, under the guise of reading lessons or case file memorization, to include things like proper investigative techniques and long-term strategy. He began to explain how the Cave's lab analysis equipment worked, if not the science behind it. They were already doing situational awareness and threat determination drills, as a part of Robin's regular combat training, but now Bruce added logic puzzles, observation and memory-sharpening techniques, and some emergency first aid. He even got Robin to try meditation, as long as Bruce agreed they could do it on the Manor's roof, under the stars.

Whether it was the new knowledge and capabilities themselves, or simply the attitude adjustment Bruce had made—as Selina insisted, every time she ran into him, which seemed to be happening with alarming frequency of late, as if she was worried that without regular updates about Ivy Bruce would just show up at her penthouse apartment looking for a fight—it became easier and easier to think of Robin as human. Bruce stopped warning him about not leaving the Manor grounds, and started scolding him for not wearing any shoes in the garden and leaving muddy footprints in the kitchen after a storm. He stopped worrying about Robin breaking vases or destroying furniture because he was bored, and started warning him to quit running in the house, unless he wanted to fall and hurt himself.

The first time _that_ had happened, Bruce had actually had a mini crisis about it. Robin was about as likely to trip and fall while running as Bruce was to voluntarily retire the Bat and live a quiet life in the suburbs. Even if he did trip for some unfathomable reason, a fall couldn't possibly hurt someone who had a tendency to casually jump off three-story buildings without the aid of a grapple or a gliding cape. The words had just come out, almost like a reflex—and that wasn't a reflex Bruce had ever expected to have, or need. It had stopped him in his tracks, uncertain and uncomfortable. When asked, Alfred just raised his elegant eyebrows and went about his business. Selina, on the other hand, thought it was hilarious, although it wasn't clear which part she found funnier—the reflex itself, or Bruce's mild panic at discovering it.

In mid-September Bruce finally broke down and got a television for Robin's room, like he'd thought about since the beginning. Bruce might be sleeping less than he had before, which had been fairly little even then, but he did still need a few hours every night. He probably shouldn't have felt guilty about leaving Robin to wander a sleeping Manor alone, but he did, and Robin wasn't quite ready for full-length novels yet—he'd have woken Bruce up every fifteen minutes with a vocabulary question. So early-morning television it was; even if it was mostly infomercials, it had to be better than staring at the walls.

Once Robin got the hang of how the TV set worked, though, Bruce began to find him draped over the back of a couch in the living room at all hours of the day and night, clicking through channels. Robin initially didn't seem to have a preference for one type of entertainment over the other, but instead had a tendency to study them all, cartoons and documentaries and soap operas alike, as if worried that there was going to be some kind of test later.

Sometimes, if Bruce wasn't busy or needed at the office, he would pause on his way through the room and sit for ten minutes, or thirty, or an hour, answering Robin's endless questions. Somewhere around the end of the first week, Bruce noticed that Robin had begun laughing at the sitcom or late-night talk show jokes along with the studio audience, which was something of a shock. Bruce hadn't been sure, until then, that Robin was capable of recognizing mortal culture and customs enough to understand those kinds of jokes, let alone appreciate them. He'd always had his own sense of humor, of course, often rooted in mischief—but now he was passably-human enough to catch the subtleties in behavior patterns that indicated a joke, even if he still had trouble with wordplay and understanding puns.

Not long after that, Robin graduated from understanding jokes to making them. The whole thing started when Robin stumbled across a cable-network marathon of old _I Love Lucy_ episodes. He settled in on the couch downstairs after patrol one night to watch it, fascinated. Bruce found him still there the next morning, and he was sitting in the same spot when Bruce got back from the office later that afternoon, as if he hadn't moved in the intervening hours. For someone who usually couldn't sit still for more than thirty seconds before starting to fidget, it was quite a commitment. Bruce was more bemused than anything, right up until ten-o-clock rolled around, and Robin protested leaving for patrol because the marathon wasn't over until midnight.

Bruce insisted; they'd been following rumors of a monster in the sewers that he was pretty sure was going to lead them straight to Killer Croc, and Robin's speed and agility would be hugely beneficial in that fight. Robin had eventually been persuaded to come, but he'd grumbled and complained the entire night, even attempting to get Croc to weigh in on whether it was fair that he had been dragged away from the marathon, despite the fact that Croc had been making a serious attempt to rip Robin's arms off at the time. But the real retaliation didn't start until they were back at the Manor and out of their "work clothes." From that point on, Robin proceeded to enter every room for the next several days with a loud cry of, "Bruuuucie! I'm _home_!" in a surprisingly passable Cuban accent.

Bruce didn't fully understand the joke until Alfred, perhaps taking pity on him—or, perhaps, simply tired of hiding his startled smile behind his hand or a polite cough—silently pointed him toward a mirror. Robin had apparently placed a glamour on Bruce that turned his normally-black hair a bright, fire-truck red, as if someone had dipped him upside down in a bucket of garish paint.

"That's not what red hair looks like," Bruce pointed out, trying not to wince at his own reflection.

"Gosh, how would _I_ know?" Robin said, grinning brightly, with an altogether-too-innocent tilt to his head. "The show's in black and white."

Short of using a Command or confining him to his room—which seemed a bit harsh for relatively harmless mischief, no matter how annoying it was—Bruce couldn't find a way to make Robin drop the unflattering glamour. It followed him all around the house, even when Robin was on a different floor. He was just thankful that it didn't extend beyond the grounds, or he would have been forced to wear a hat every time he went in to the office.

In return, Bruce dug out the driest, most boring quarterly-earnings reports he could find to use for Robin's reading lessons. It was oddly cathartic to watch Robin struggle through an entire paragraph of unfamiliar words, sounding them out one syllable at a time and sometimes asking for definitions, only to reach the end and realize that all those sentences hadn't really said anything of note in the first place. His growing horror at corporate-speak vocabulary and deliberately-obtuse mission statements matched Bruce's own, on his most cynical days. He was suspicious of every paper Bruce handed him for _weeks_.

In the end, Alfred was forced to ban all episodes of _I Love Lucy_ , all unnecessary glamours, and all non-critical business documents from the house, in fear of some sort of escalating prank war. Bruce's hair went back to black, Robin's reading lessons went back to mission reports and the occasional newspaper article, and the television alternated between kid's cartoons, the movie channels, and nominally-educational documentaries on science and history.

"I wish I had been here to see that," Selina admitted when Bruce told her the story one morning, over the light brunch Alfred had insisted on preparing before she left the Manor. Either Alfred was warming up to her as a potential future Mrs. Wayne, or else he had finally lost all hope of any other woman putting up with Bruce for more than a few consecutive days at a time. Bruce just enjoyed the marked decrease in judging looks. "You, a redhead!"

Even _Clark_ thought it was funny, which didn't seem fair.

"Now you're ganging up on me," Bruce grumbled, as Clark attempted to hide a manly giggle behind one hand. "You didn't see it; you have no idea." He shook his head, feeling a compulsive urge to find a mirror and double-check that his hair was the proper color. "My complexion isn't meant for red hair. It was awful."

This time Clark didn't bother to hide his smile. "How about that," he said, decidedly not as a question. He settled his large body into the spare chair down in the Cave. It looked somewhat ridiculous, with the gaudy red cape pinned underneath him, but if it was uncomfortable he didn't say anything. "Here I thought the pretty-boy Bruce Wayne playboy-thing was all just a cover. Turns out, no—you're actually _vain_."

Bruce glanced away from the computer, which was still running the correlation on the data Clark had flown over from Metropolis, just long enough to glare at Clark. He didn't say _I am not_ , because that would have made him sound about four years old, but he thought his pointed look got the message across just the same. "It was _awful_ ," he repeated. "I was a half-step away from locking him in his room." He paused. "I made him read corporate tax summaries."

"Aw, cut the kid some slack, Bruce," Clark said. His voice had gone soft. "It's not like he has any friends to play with."

"He's not exactly a kid," Bruce said, mostly under his breath, not wanting Robin—who was on the other side of the Cave in the training area absently playing with the free weights—to hear him. "Not in the ways that really matter, anyway."

Clark raised his eyebrows, leaning his huge frame forward in the rolling chair. Bruce was briefly afraid it was going to snap under the stress of containing Clark's presence. "A kid is exactly what he is," Clark said, not unkindly, but firm. "In _all_ the ways that matter."

The computer beeped, and Bruce hastily typed in the print command. "Your results," he said, gesturing across to the printer.

Clark waited a moment, but when it was obvious Bruce had nothing more to say, he got up and unhurriedly grabbed the paper as the machine spat it out into his broad hands. "There are maybe three or four places in Metropolis that match this profile, tops. The Toyman has to be holed up in one of them." He looked up and smiled. "You two busy this evening?"

Bruce rolled his eyes. "All that's left is the punching," he said. "You don't need me for that part."

Clark shrugged. "Didn't say that I did," he pointed out. "I just asked if you were busy."

Bruce sighed. Half of his escaped-villain list was still at large, but his only current lead was tracking the movements of several chemicals that could be used as fear toxin ingredients, which he was hoping would eventually lead him to the Scarecrow. He was still waiting on a shipping manifest to be faxed over from a pharmaceutical company, and unfortunately it wouldn't come for another day or two, at the earliest. His plans for tonight had been a quick patrol and a review of open case files from Gordon, maybe walking Robin through the ongoing investigations to see what he could pick up on. It was nothing that he couldn't put off for a night, and Robin _had_ been pestering him about wanting to go along to Metropolis, the next time Bruce went over for an assist.

"Robin?" Bruce called, raising his voice. "You want to go to Metropolis to help Clark?"

"Yeah, sure!" Robin called back. There was a muted crash as he dropped the weights he'd been balancing on his head, and then he scampered over to where Bruce and Clark were waiting. "Can we fly?"

"No," Bruce said immediately. He got up from his chair and walked over to the storage case that held the armor. By the time he got changed, it would be dark enough to go out. You wouldn't know it from the weather, which was still stuck firmly in late-summer, but the autumnal equinox was only a week away, and the sun was finally starting to set a bit earlier. "I'm driving."

Robin said a word he must have picked up from late-night television, albeit without much conviction, like he hadn't bothered getting his hopes up. Bruce half-expected Clark to scold him for using that kind of word, given that aura of "Aw, shucks," Midwestern-style wholesomeness that surrounded him, but Clark was too busy staring dubiously over toward the garage section and the secret exit. "Does that thing even _have_ a backseat?" he asked, sounding a little nervous.

"It's okay," Robin said, patting Clark on the elbow—which was about as high up as he could reach on Clark's huge frame—as he skipped past them, toward the car. As he went, his image shimmered, and his jeans and t-shirt were suddenly replaced with his colorful costume. "I'll tell it you're a friend, so it won't hate you like it did me at first."

Clark glanced over at Bruce and raised his eyebrows.

"Don't ask," Bruce said, shaking his head, and reached for his suit.

/~*~/

"Metropolis," Robin said, looking around with wide eyes, "is _weird._ "

"Stay focused," Bruce admonished. "Just because they look silly doesn't mean they're not dangerous."

Silently, though, Bruce agreed. Only in Metropolis would an investigation into a villain—even one with the relatively innocuous-sounding name of the Toyman—end with two blocks' worth of streets being overrun by over-sized, brightly-colored, falsely-smiling toy soldiers and wind-up tanks that just happened to be equipped with live weapons. Luckily the tanks were slow, so Clark was neatly ripping them in half and stacking them in tidy piles on street corners before they could get too far from the warehouse where the Toyman had built them. That left the toy soldier round-up to Bruce and Robin, with a hefty assist from the Metropolis cops, who—rather than try to arrest them or complicating things, as Bruce might have expected—had rolled up in their squad cars and actually asked Clark how they could help.

"Figures," Bruce had muttered at that point. The Gotham PD might not go out of their way to enforce that arrest warrant on file for the Batman, but it definitely existed, and outward appearances had to be maintained. If Bruce ever got cornered, even Gordon would have to bring him in, or risk going down with him. Not to mention the fact that there _were_ cops who did want the Bat thrown in jail, or at least a psych ward—and not all of them were on the mob payroll, either. Two years of fighting for his city, and half of her citizens still didn't trust him. Meanwhile, across the Bay, the Metropolis PD had practically deputized Clark, and he'd only been doing this for a few months.

"It's the bright colors," Robin told him, very sagely, as he disarmed a toy soldier, flipped it into the gutter, and stomped on its face. The plastic crumpled and split apart, exposing the mechanisms that powered the automaton. (Robin had asked for permission, when the toy soldiers first appeared, wondering if they counted as killing people. Bruce had told him to cut loose, and now he was almost regretting it.) "The solid black is scary. People don't like it."

"The solid black is functional," Bruce insisted. He thumbed an electroshock grenade and dropped it in the front row of advancing soldiers, then leapt clear before it activated and fried whatever was powering them, disabling several at once. "We're supposed to stay hidden."

Robin took a moment to look pointedly toward the sidewalk nearby, where a rank of cops was holding a perimeter that the soldiers had so far not managed to breach. Just behind them was a crowd of mildly-interested civilians, seeming entirely unconcerned about the real bullets the toy soldiers were firing, including what looked like at least one van from every major news-station in the city. Quite a few of them were looking up, tracking what could be seen of Clark's progress against the night sky—mostly a red and blue blur, followed by a loud crash and the screech of ripping metal—but the rest were peeking around the police line and watching Bruce and Robin dismantle the jerky, poorly-balanced soldiers.

"Next time I'm staying in Gotham," Bruce said, feeling an urge to duck behind an overturned car.

In his ear, the longer-distance radio Alfred had added to the suit beeped at him. Bruce pulled back from the advancing soldiers, reached up to switch channels—Robin was close enough to hear him anyway, and Clark wasn't even wearing the ear-piece Bruce had given him, saying it kept falling out without a mask or helmet to anchor it—and activated his microphone. "What is it?"

There was a brief, heavy pause.

 _"You need to come home,"_ Alfred's voice finally said, very quietly. _"Now."_

The entire world went still around Bruce, distant and dim and unimportant, a washed-out watercolor painting seen through heavy fog. He could hear his own heartbeat thudding in his ears, rapid and shallow. "Bane?" he asked, and it came out voiceless, a harsh whisper.

 _"No,"_ Alfred's voice said.

Bruce felt a swell of both intense relief and furious disappointment. It lasted only a moment before Alfred spoke in his ear again.

 _"It's the Joker, sir. He's on the television, and he's asking for you."_

Bruce paused just long enough to realign his brain from creepy-but-ineffective toys to extremely dangerous, extremely unpredictable clowns. "We're in the middle of a situation here. Can Gordon or the SWAT teams handle it?"

 _"Two hostages are already dead,"_ Alfred's voice said, sounding apologetic. _"You have one hour to show, or he'll kill another one."_

Bruce closed his eyes. "Their names," he said thickly.

 _"Afterward,"_ Alfred said, his tone gentle but allowing for no argument. _"Right now you need to worry about the ones you can still save."_

Bruce opened his eyes. "We're on our way," he said, and closed the second channel. "Robin! Disengage! We're needed in Gotham."

/~*~/

Never had the distance between Gotham and Metropolis seemed so great, even with Bruce pushing his car as hard as he could without endangering either their own lives, or the other motorists on the highway that he was speeding past. Luckily, Alfred was able to give them the details as they drove, so that even though they arrived in the city with barely five minutes to spare before the Joker's deadline, they weren't walking in entirely blind.

What Alfred had been able to put together was this: At around ten-thirty, as the local news-stations were gearing up to go live with the evening news, the Joker had somehow gotten inside one of the major studios undetected. By the time the program went on-air at eleven, the main pair of anchors had vacant eyes and stiff, rictus smiles, held upright in their chairs only by the rope tied around their torsos. The Joker sat between them, hands folded on the table in mock-sincerity, addressing the camera.

Alfred hadn't repeated the Joker's speech word-for-word, but had summarized its salient points—namely, that he was upset that he'd spent the better part of a year in Arkham and Bruce hadn't visited him a single time, or even sent a letter. (Apparently, he'd been writing weekly letters addressed to the Batman the whole time, which—even if his psychiatric team had let him send them—the postman couldn't have done anything with.) It was okay, though; the Joker would forgive him, if only the Bat would come out and play. That's when he gave the one-hour deadline.

The two anchors had already been dead when the cameras started rolling. The rest of the studio staff were hostages, some of which had been strapped to what had to be explosives controlled by the wireless transmitter the Joker kept shuffling from hand to hand. Based on what Alfred had been able to pick up on the police scanner, the Joker had somehow managed to barricade the doors, and the cops were afraid to breach and risk the Joker setting off a major explosion. No one doubted for a second that he'd blow the place with himself inside, if he thought he was about to be interrupted.

"So, what's the plan?" Robin asked, after waiting—patiently, for him—a whole three minutes after the end of Alfred's report.

"We go inside and see what he wants," Bruce said. "We get the hostages out _before_ the fight starts, if we can."

Robin nodded. "Okay."

Bruce gripped the steering wheel so tight his gloves creaked. "Stick close to me," he added. "And keep your eyes open. He likes traps."

The studio was in the heart of the city, comprised of the top several floors of a large building, marked by the huge satellite dish and various broadcast antennas on the roof. Even with the police surrounding the building, it was relatively simple to get inside by gliding down from the next building over. Bruce didn't bother disabling or avoiding the hastily-erected camera watching the roof door; he needed the Joker to know he had come in before the deadline. He gestured for Robin to slip around it, though, not wanting to draw the Joker's attention to him just yet. Robin did so, and then stayed so close that Bruce's cape brushed against him with every step.

The first trap was in the fire-escape stairwell, and not particularly well-hidden. It was almost a friendly gesture, an easy opening salvo to warm them up. Bruce put a hand on Robin's shoulder to halt him, which ended up not being necessary; Robin was already pointing at the trip wire. After disabling it, Bruce checked the trap—and found that it would only have sprayed them with bright yellow paint, if it had triggered.

" _Acid_ paint?" Robin suggested. "Or maybe it's poisonous!"

Bruce silenced him with a gesture and kept moving.

They reached the main studio without incident, finding the entrance suspiciously unlocked and unguarded. It was arranged as one giant room, with two stages: one with the main desk, the two dead anchors still horribly displayed in their seats, and a second, larger one with a screen background that had to be the weather station. The rest of the room was dark, leaving the brightly-lit stages adrift like twin islands surrounded by a black sea of shadow. Equipment and cables littered the sides and floor, running to and from cameras and several bullpen-style rows of desks, with a wall of phones and printers and fax machines on the far side, for keeping abreast of developing information. The lights themselves were heavy, bold spotlights, hanging from the ceiling in a movable, suspended rig. Bruce considered breaking them to plunge the room into darkness, but there were too many individual bulbs; it would have taken too long to hit them all, somewhat defeating the point.

Bruce didn't enter just yet, but stayed crouched against the hallway wall, peering around the door frame just enough to see. He did a quick head-count, making note of all the potential hiding places under desks and in obscured corners. The sharp line between bright stage and dim shadow made it difficult; without Robin's powers enhancing his eyesight, Bruce might not have been able to see them at all. "How many hostages?" he breathed, hardly making any sound at all.

Robin didn't speak, but instead pressed his hand against Bruce's shoulder and varied the pressure—three longer pushes with brief respites in between, and then three quick pulses—using one of the non-verbal codes Bruce had taught him. _Five, Five, Five, One, Two, Three._ Eighteen, in total. That matched Bruce's tally of the visible ones, with the possibility of a few more that couldn't be seen from this angle.

Most of them were bunched together in five separate groups of three or four, with one person in the middle duct-taped to an explosive device. Each of the surrounding hostages had their rope-bound hands resting on an arm or knee of the bomb-wearing one, which must have been the Joker's way of making sure they were in range of the blast if he triggered it. He'd probably threatened to shoot them outright if they tried to back far enough away to spare themselves. Everyone had a strip or two of tape across his or her mouth, preventing them from talking easily to each other or calling for help, although the Joker had probably been more concerned about one of them messing up his big speech, earlier.

And there, in the center of the main stage, sitting cross-legged on the top of the desk and fidgeting impatiently, like a kid waiting at the top of the stairs on Christmas morning, was the Joker. He was no longer talking to the cameras, probably because he knew the network had preempted him with the emergency broadcast signal some time earlier. The wireless transmitter was in his left hand, just as Alfred had described over the radio, and there was a large revolver in his right. Bruce could see that his finger was already on the trigger, rather than waiting safely on the barrel, and his other thumb was resting lightly against a big red button on the transmitter. That had no doubt been a Joker after-market addition, his own little touch of theatricality. If he was going to blow something up, he wanted a giant red button to push to do it.

Bruce briefly considered trying to use a projectile weapon or a knockout-gas canister from here, but he didn't like the odds of the Joker going unconscious quickly enough to prevent an explosion, or even a wild gunshot. He'd have to take his chances, see if he could draw the Joker out, or at least garner enough of his focus that Robin could either get the hostages out of range or steal the transmitter from him. Assuming it didn't have a dead-man switch of some kind.

Bruce turned to Robin. "Stay invisible as long as you can," he said, so quietly that it couldn't even qualify as a whisper. They'd found out through a lot of trial and error over the months that Robin's invisibility glamour didn't work when he was actively fighting—too hard to hold the concentration, Bruce assumed—but it lasted right up until the first punch, most of the time. "When you get a clean chance, take it—but be careful."

Robin nodded. For once, he wasn't smiling, as if he understood the severity of the situation. His glamour rippled, resolving into the image of the bare-chested, barefoot, slightly-inhuman-looking boy that had first appeared in the garden months ago, which was how Bruce's brain interpreted Robin's invisibility, given that the binding wouldn't let him hide from his master. "Ready," he said, at a normal volume now that his voice couldn't be heard by any ears other than Bruce's own.

Bruce rounded the door, and in one smooth motion threw a bat-shaped throwing star so that it embedded itself into the wooden newscasters' desk about two inches in front of the Joker's knees. The Joker didn't even flinch, but if it was possible his manic grin got wider.

"Batsy!" he screeched, in that grating voice of his. He waved, which was somewhat disconcerting given that there was a gun in his hand when he did it. "You _came!_ I was starting to think you were going to leave me hanging."

Bruce stalked forward, making his body-language as aggressive as possible. "You have my attention," he said, in his flattest, most threatening voice.

Some of the hostages were clearly in too much shock to react, even to the Batman showing up unexpectedly in their midst, but others began to murmur behind the tape over their mouths. A few even began to move, although Bruce couldn't tell if they were trying to come toward him, expecting him to protect them, or if they were scared of him, too.

Nobody got very far, though, because the Joker unfurled his lanky legs and jumped down from the desk, scratching at the back of his slicked-back, green-colored hair with the base of the revolver. "No, no, _no_ ," he said, and without fail the hostages froze. Even the ones who had never moved at all seemed to grow even more still. "You can't leave yet. You're vital pieces!" Then, with a suddenness that gave Bruce whiplash, the Joker spun to face him and perked up again, excited and happy. "It's so _good_ to see you, Bats! I missed our little games, you know." He cocked his head. "Did I mention how glad I was when I found out that you weren't really dead? All that bragging by Bane—brag, brag, brag, _brag_ ; it was insufferable—and yet here you are, safe and sound."

"Here I am," Bruce said, still moving deliberately forward. "Let the hostages go."

The Joker shook his head, instantly furious. "Weren't you _listening_? They're vital pieces! How can we play a proper game if we don't have any pieces to play with?" His cartoon-ish smile pulled into a pout, and then with frightening rapidity his demeanor shifted again, into something sharp and serious and smart. "Ah, ah, ah—that's far enough, Batsy," he said, lifting the transmitter and wiggling it back and forth slightly. "You come within punching distance, and every single one of us gets an all-expenses paid trip to the morgue, as bloody confetti."

Bruce halted. He was about three feet from the lip of the stage, with another four feet to the Joker beyond that. Somewhere behind him, Robin would be moving in a slow, careful arc through the room, trying to get as close as possible to the Joker's back without risking losing hold of his invisibility.

"All right, then," Bruce said, keeping his voice even and calm, the way he might have spoken to a skittish animal or a traumatized child. "What game are we playing?"

"I'm _so_ glad you asked!" The Joker struck a dramatic pose, back straight and head lifted, and held the transmitter to his mouth like a walkie-talkie—or, no, like an old-fashioned game show host's microphone. "It's time for … drum-roll, please?" He threw his other hand out wide, making several of the hostages flinch as the gun briefly swung toward them. "Which! One! Should! We! … _Kill!_ " He actually spun around in a little circle as he said the final word, dragging the syllable out for an entire second, and stopped when he was facing Bruce again. "So, what do you say, Big Bad Bats?" he asked, still grinning eager and bright. "Can we play?"

"If I win," Bruce said slowly, trying to give Robin the time he needed to get in position, "then nobody else dies?"

"Ugh," the Joker groaned, throwing his head back. "You are _no_ fun."

"Joker …" Bruce said, threateningly.

"Okay, okay, _fine_ ," the Joker spat, glowering at him. "Be that way. You win, and nobody dies. _Boring._ "

Out of the corner of his eye, Bruce saw the barest outline of Robin's form, shrouded in shadows, creeping along the side wall. "Are you going to tell me the rules?" he asked.

The Joker was immediately bright again, practically humming with excitement. "Oh, you're gonna _love_ this." He held out his revolver, first pointing it at Bruce like he was planning to shoot him—and Bruce tensed, wondering if he should try to dodge, or go loose-limbed to let the Kevlar and Robin's gifted resilience absorb the impact—but then the Joker turned the gun, showing him the side of the barrel where the cylinder was located. "This holds six bullets," he said. He shook it a little, which made Bruce uneasy, since the odds of the safety being on were absolute zero. "But I only loaded it with _five!_ "

"Russian roulette?" Bruce asked, flatly unimpressed. "That's the game?"

"No, no, no, have a little faith in me, Bats," the Joker said, sounding mildly insulted. "You see, of the five explosives our lovely audience volunteers are wearing—you're doing splendidly, folks; keep up the good work—only _two_ are real. The other three are just some putty and wires."

Bruce had a sinking feeling he knew where this was going.

"Now, here's the exciting part," the Joker continued, and leaned forward, dropping his voice to a stage-whisper. "I can either shoot one person, with a five-in-six chance of killing them—or I can randomly activate one of my _explosive_ fashion accessories, and have a two-in-five chance of killing three or four people at once!"

Bruce's stomach turned at the glee shining out of the Joker's wide eyes. "What's the point?" he asked quietly. "Why do this?"

The Joker seemed taken aback. "I'm curious," he said, as if that explained everything. Maybe to him, it did. "Which one will it be, Bats? Better than fifty-fifty odds of saving everyone here, but risking a higher body-count if you lose? Or hoping for that one-in-six chance because it guarantees the fewest casualties?"

Behind the Joker, Robin stepped lightly up onto the stage in a crouch, completely silent. It was disconcerting to be able to see him under the super-bright lights, but have him cast no shadow in any direction.

"How do I know you're telling the truth?" Bruce asked, readying himself to leap forward when Robin made his move.

"Now, that hurts my feelings," the Joker said, pouting again. "It wouldn't be a very fun game if you didn't have a chance to win, would it?" He threw his head back and laughed, the sound just as eerie and chilling as it had always been in Bruce's half-remembered nightmares. "So, which will it be, Batsy?"

Robin was almost in position; a few more steps and he'd be close enough to strike. There was a strange look on his face, something almost afraid, as if the Joker was unsettling enough to bother even him—but he visibly shook it off and began moving forward again.

"Batsy? _Hello?_ Tick-tock!"

Bruce snapped his attention back to the Joker. "What if you miss?" he asked, attempting to stall for just a few more seconds. "When was the last time you fired a gun? I can't imagine they let you have one in Arkham."

"Oh," the Joker said, a little taken aback. He cocked his head to the side, thoughtfully. "Good point." He nodded decisively and lunged sideways, jumping off the stage just as Robin was stepping into striking position behind him.

Robin froze, but the Joker didn't seem to have noticed him—it was just bad timing.

The Joker landed at the nearest group of hostages and kicked out at one of them, saying, "You!" as he gestured with his revolver.

Bruce reflexively started to move in that direction, but the Joker waggled the transmitter at him and made a series of warning sounds, so Bruce stilled. Meanwhile, the hostage obediently got to his feet, shaky and uncoordinated either from having his hands bound, or just from terror. The other two in that group, not counting the one who was strapped to the explosives and therefore probably afraid to move too much, flinched back from the man who had been singled-out, as if worried they'd get caught in whatever the Joker was doing by proximity.

"Good," the Joker said, and gestured the man to take several steps back toward the stage. "Be sure you stand very still, now," he said, with disturbingly genuine-sounding concern in his voice. "Batsy here was worried I might miss, so you're going to help me out by being a good, easy target. Okay?"

The man babbled something desperate but unintelligible behind the duct-tape over his mouth, his eyes wide and hysterical as they stared pleadingly at the Joker. His knees were shaking so badly that Bruce was afraid he was going to collapse.

"I _said,_ stand still," the Joker repeated, sounding exasperated. He smacked the man in the shoulder with the butt of the revolver, not particularly hard but in an effort to get his attention. The man's garbled cries got higher-pitched, and he cringed away. "Come on, it's not that hard," the Joker told him. "Just stand _still._ "

"Joker," Bruce called, harshly, trying to recenter the Joker's intention on himself rather than an innocent bystander. "That's enough."

The Joker sighed, heavily put-upon. "It's _so_ hard to find good help these days," he said, shaking his head. Then he raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

The sound was impossibly loud in the enclosed space, followed by the sharp smell of gunpowder and a moment's breathless silence. In the space between his heartbeats, Bruce was somewhere else—a dark alley in the rain, cold and unforgiving—listening to his mother scream as he watched her white pearls crash down into a puddle on the black pavement, one by one. Then his heart thudded again, and he blinked away the memory, struggling to focus.

The bullet had struck the hostage right between the eyes, snapping his head back and leaving him almost dangling in the air, arched slightly backward, until gravity won over momentum and the body fell boneless to the floor with a solid thump. There was a brief crescendo of startled cries and half-choked screams, quickly dissolving to whimpers and quiet sobs when the Joker turned his attention back in their direction.

The worst part of it, though—no, that wasn't fair. The _worst_ part was that there was a third dead body in the room, that yet another Gotham family would be forced to grieve someone taken from them before their time. Bruce wouldn't diminish that, or place his own guilt and motivations above those of the people who would be directly effected. That would be selfish, and arrogant.

The worst part of that moment, though, _for Bruce_ , was the look on Robin's face. The shock had been so great that Robin had lost his hold on his invisibility, and now stood silhouetted in the bright stage lights in his colorful costume, utterly still and perfectly exposed. He was staring at the Joker with a sort of horrified understanding, like he had just figured something out, and it had fundamentally shaken him right down to the core.

Bruce had a sudden, fierce wish that he'd left Robin in safe, silly Metropolis, ripping apart tinker-toy tanks with Clark.

"Honestly," the Joker said, shrugging with both arms and seemingly unconcerned about the blood beginning to pool around his purple dress shoes, "some people just can't follow directions." Then he seemed to remember the gun in one hand, and held it up, grinning as he looked at the faintly-smoking tip. "Hey, look at that," he said, smiling at Bruce. "We got a live one, _first_ try!"

By some miracle, the Joker hadn't yet noticed Robin standing a few feet to his side, but he would at any second. They were out of options, and Bruce was done stalling and waiting for the Joker to kill someone else.

" _Robin,_ " Bruce said, putting just enough power into the name to break through the boy's lingering shock without really hurting him, a sort of mystical equivalent to lightly slapping him on the cheek to wake him up. A little start went through Robin, and thankfully his expression cleared from whatever awful realization had taken hold of him. " _Now._ "

Things began to happen very fast, then.

Bruce and Robin moved together, converging on the Joker from two sides, ninety degrees apart. Robin was both much closer and fractionally faster, so he got there first. He was already reaching out, obviously trying to snatch the transmitter before the Joker could set off the bombs. It should have been doable—Robin was only a few feet away, and he could be lightning-quick on the move, leaving the Joker no time to react even if he spotted him coming—but the loss of Robin's invisibility, and Bruce's use of his name, must have been all the warning the Joker needed.

By the time Robin was within grabbing distance, the Joker was already turning, and Bruce—still a good ten feet away, albeit closing fast—braced himself for an explosion. Surprisingly, though, the Joker's first reaction wasn't to press the giant red button, but rather to drop the transmitter entirely so that his hand could sneak inside his suit jacket to reach for something. Robin faltered, trying to adjust on the fly from grabbing the transmitter out of the Joker's hand to catching it in mid-air as it fell.

Just as Robin's nimble fingertips snagged the bulky transmitter box, maybe eighteen inches from the stage floor, the Joker's unnaturally-white hand reappeared from his suit pocket. He was holding a green-and-purple-checked pocket handkerchief, which was folded over around a lump of something in its center. As Bruce made the eight-inch jump up onto the stage, the Joker pinched one corner of the handkerchief between two fingers and flicked it out in Robin's direction, like someone shooing away an annoying insect.

Robin flinched back, startled, but he wasn't fast enough. He gasped in alarm as a small cloud of dark gray dust came puffing out of the little cloth square, hitting him squarely in the face. Bruce was a little more than two strides away, now, and even from there he could smell it: a sharp, bitter tang on the back of his tongue, like old blood—and he went cold with sudden dread and understanding.

It was iron. Specifically, it was a handful of iron shavings, like the ones used in schools to teach kids about magnetic fields. It could have come from any toy or hobby store in the city, cheap and innocuous.

Robin _screamed._

The Joker began to laugh maniacally. He danced back, getting out of Bruce's path so that he had an unhindered view as Robin fell, hard and graceless, like someone had suddenly increased the local gravity a hundred-fold. The transmitter hit the ground with a reckless clatter, forgotten as Robin clawed frantically at his own face, thrashing around on the stage.

Bruce's heart was in his throat as he cleared the last step between him and Robin. He had the brief, nonsensical thought that he'd been somehow dosed with the Scarecrow's fear toxin without realizing it. "Robin?" he asked, skidding to a stop on one knee, half an instant too late to keep the boy from cracking his head on the stage floor as his back arched uncontrollably.

Robin just kept screaming, although the sound was rapidly spiraling down into a rough, hoarse screech. A moment later, Bruce understood why, as between Robin's clawing fingers he started to see blood pouring from the boy's face. It was primarily coming from his eyes and nose, leaking out around the white lenses and drenching his domino mask, but also beginning to spill out of his mouth and run down his chin. Across his cheekbones, his golden skin was raw and angry and burned where the iron dust had hit him—and that's when Bruce remembered his startled gasp, and realized that Robin had _inhaled_ some of it. It was eating at the soft tissue of his nose and throat, the same way it was attacking his eyes; that's where all the blood was coming from.

Bruce's hands were suddenly on the transmitter, though he didn't remember picking it up, and he barely registered the spark of electricity as he ripped out the wires and rendered it harmless. Somewhere, underneath the panic, the Batman part of him was still functioning—and he clung to it, desperately needing that calm clarity. That same part of him was tracking the Joker's movements, now at the edge of the stage and watching the proceedings with rapt interest, utterly gleeful at the damage he'd caused.

"I _thought_ you might bring your little demon," the Joker was saying, unaccountably proud and excited. "I'm so glad I took my time and figured out how to properly say hello." He laughed again, high and uneven. "Oh, isn't it adorable? You should have brought it out to play a long time ago, Batsy. Think of all the fun we could have with it!"

"His name," Bruce growled, "is _Robin_."

The Joker cocked his head, inquisitive. "Say, do you think it's going to die?" he asked, sounding genuinely curious.

Bruce's attempts to wipe the iron dust residue from Robin's face weren't accomplishing anything except getting the boy's blood all over his hands, turning his black gloves shiny under the harsh stage lighting. Robin was _still_ screaming, but there was a gurgle under the sound now as the blood started to pool in his throat. Bruce reached for him, feeling utterly helpless, and tried to hold him down through his uncoordinated flailing and kicking. Robin finally stopped trying to claw at his own face, and instead fixed a death-grip on the folds of Bruce's cape that hung down over one shoulder as Bruce crouched over him.

"Robin," Bruce said again, struggling to keep the boy from slamming his head back into the stage floor again as he writhed through the pain. "I need you to be still."

In his arms, Robin's scream finally faded out, replaced by wet, hacking coughs.

"Ooh," the Joker said, swaying forward in renewed interest. "That doesn't sound good, does it? If you don't get that iron out of its system fast …" He didn't finish, but trailed off with a series of disappointed tongue clicks. "Shame. I was rather looking forward to playing more games."

"Robin, breathe," Bruce ordered, in his sternest Batman-voice. He managed to turn the boy on his side, hoping that the blood would spill out instead of choking him. Should he try to flush out Robin's nose and throat with water, or would that risk the iron getting into his stomach and causing internal bleeding? He had some poison countermeasures back in the Cave that were basically glorified emetics, to induce vomiting; maybe that would be safer. "Can you hear me?"

"I know!" the Joker said suddenly, and there was a muted thump as he jumped off the stage somewhere behind Bruce. "It's not quite the game I had planned, but hey, I'm adaptable."

Bruce wrenched his attention away from Robin, briefly looking over his shoulder. The Joker was climbing back up on the stage again, and bringing another hostage with him this time. He still had the gun—how had Bruce forgotten the _gun?_ —and leveled it steadily at the woman's temple. She had tears streaming down her cheeks, but she'd apparently learned from her unfortunate coworker and was doing an admirable job of standing relatively still despite her shaking knees.

"See, here's the thing," the Joker said, peering over the woman's shoulder and grinning at Bruce. "Get your little demon to medical attention fast enough, and maybe it won't die on you. _Maybe._ " He paused for another round of laughter, head thrown back. "But to do that, you'll have to leave little old me here in a room full of innocent people. And you _know_ how I get when I'm bored."

At that, the hostage very deliberately closed her eyes.

Meanwhile, Robin's thrashing had started to quiet, changing over to frantic shaking. Bruce didn't think that was a good sign.

"Or," the Joker said, drawing the word into a loving croon, "you can walk away. Leave the little birdie right there in a pool of blood for me to play with, and everyone else can walk away with you, no worse for wear."

Bruce's hands tightened on Robin's shoulders.

"You can think about it," the Joker said, mock-graciously. "But don't take too long! That thing dies, and the offer comes off the table."

A month ago, Bruce might have hesitated. Three months ago, it would have been difficult to decide which outcome was preferable. Five months ago, Bruce would have been relieved to let someone else take care of his homicidal little problem for him. But that was before midnight tag on the rooftops. That was before reading lessons, _I Love Lucy_ , and quiet meditation under the stars. That was before one awkward hug. That was before Robin stopped being _it_ , and started being _him._

"B—B—B?"

Bruce looked down at the shaking boy in his arms. He couldn't tell if Robin was struggling to say _Bruce_ or _Batman_ , not that it mattered; the intent was clear either way. "I'm right here," he said, quietly, with no trace of Batman harshening his tone. "I'm not going anywhere."

Robin's small hands clutched at him, moving down from the folds of his cape to his utility belt. At first Bruce thought he was just seeking reassurance, clinging to something familiar, but then Robin's clever fingers plucked a bat-shaped throwing star out of the holder and retreated, pulling it to his heaving chest. He blinked his white lenses several times, still shaking uncontrollably, and managed to get just enough blood out of them to look at Bruce, more expressive than blank white circles had any right to be. Underneath the terror and pain and blood, Bruce could see something else, something steady and sure.

Robin spoke again, or tried to. The word was swallowed by a thick gurgle, but from the shape it had to be either _No_ or _Go._ Then Robin pushed Bruce's hands off his own shoulders with arms that twitched and jerked in spasms. The whole time, he stared intently at Bruce, seemingly trying to communicate without words. Slowly, he held up his green-gloved fingers, struggling to keep them still enough to see. _Three?_

Bruce blinked behind his own lenses, scrupulously ignoring the way the world briefly went blurry. He laid a hand on Robin's head, straightening the sweat- and blood-soaked black curls above the domino mask, fiercely proud and more afraid in that moment than he'd ever been in his life. "Two," he said, in a low voice only Robin could hear.

"Well?" the Joker asked. "What's it gonna be, Bats? The demon brat, or the room full of innocent people?"

Robin's white lenses winked out as the boy closed his eyes behind his mask. Bruce suspected that there was no point to keeping them open; the blood-flow was beginning to slow, meaning the iron dust had already destroyed all the soft tissue. "One," Robin whispered, in between wet, choking coughs _._

Bruce got to his feet and turned, leaving Robin on the floor alone—blind, bloody, and impossibly brave. "Neither," he said.

Behind him, Robin rolled up on one shoulder and whipped the stolen throwing star into an arc that slammed it into the Joker's gun-hand, right on target between the tendons coming up from the wrist. The Joker yelled in shock and pain, dropping the gun and loosening his hold on the hostage. Bruce was on him a fraction of a second later, shoving the hostage to relative safety and planting a fist into the Joker's jaw that made the other man flop backwards and tumble right off the stage altogether with another indignant shout.

Bruce automatically picked up the gun, hands cycling through practiced motions as he dismantled it and sent bullets clinking to the stage floor. Then he threw the disarmed weapon as hard as he could, oddly satisfied by the crunch it made when it struck the outer wall, leaving an impressive dent behind.

By then, the Joker was two-thirds of the way to the door and moving fast, throwing star still embedded in his hand. Bruce could have chased him, probably would have caught him in the hallway, gotten him thrown back in Arkham—but he had other priorities, at the moment. Let the cops worry about detaining him, if they could.

Instead, Bruce returned immediately to Robin's side. The boy had flopped onto his back after his impressive stunt with the throwing star, clearly having used up all his remaining strength and focus. The shaking was slipping into a full seizure, now, his white lenses back open to bare slits as what was left of his eyes rolled up behind them. Still, he scrambled for a hold on Bruce's cape and managed to cough out a single, broken word.

"S—safe?"

Bruce picked him up, cradling Robin close to his chest. "Yes, Robin," he said. "It's safe. He's gone."

Robin shook his head, deliberately this time, Bruce thought. "The—them," Robin coughed out, obviously desperate. "Safe?"

"Yes," Bruce repeated. The world had gone peculiarly blurry again. "They're all safe. You saved them."

Robin shuddered once and went limp in his arms.

Bruce held him tighter, and began to run.

/~*~/


	11. Chapter 11

Leslie's emergency-care clinic was nestled in that odd, liminal space between what was left of Gotham's old east side Art District and the borders of the slums known, colloquially, as Crime Alley and the Bowery. The rent was cheap, and it allowed her to be close to her patients, without openly picking sides by setting up inside a specific territory. It was a thin line to walk, between clinging to enough respectability to maintain her donors and keep her doors open, and becoming enough a part of the neighborhood that her clients felt they could trust her.

The clinic itself was a small, ugly, brick-faced building on a corner lot, a single story surrounded by a half-hearted, rusted chain-link fence that was never, ever locked. Inside there was space only for a cramped waiting room that served as a triage area on bad nights, two excruciatingly tiny exam rooms for when patients needed to be separated, an operating room that didn't really deserve the name, and one extra room stuck in a corner that served as file storage, kitchen, supply closet, and Leslie's office, all at once. On any given week she might have one or two volunteer staff hanging around, interns or residents willing to donate some of their sparse free time, if she could find ones who hadn't yet lost sight of why they'd studied medicine in the first place. During good months, when the financials were a little less dire because some celebrity or politician needed to rehabilitate his or her reputation in the press with a large donation, there was also a part-time nurse who split shifts with Gotham Mercy.

Bruce had been inside only once, back when Leslie had first abandoned her cushy private practice and opened up shop down here, more than fifteen years ago now. It had made a nice photo for the papers: twelve-year-old Bruce Wayne, still small and solemn and silent then, standing beside one of his father's old coworkers in the clinic she'd opened in Thomas Wayne's honor, less than half a mile from where he'd been gunned down in the streets. Bruce had understood perfectly why he was there; even at twelve he was an old hand at manipulating his image and the public's sympathy, and Leslie had asked for his help. That didn't make it easy, to be so close to where he had lost everything, to dredge back up the memories he was trying to move past. He hadn't been back since.

Until now.

It had been hours since the Joker's attack, deep into the darkest part of early morning, and Robin wasn't healing. He was still unconscious, despite Bruce and Alfred's best efforts to help by cleaning off the iron residue that clung to his skin and clothing. They had tried everything they could think of to remove it, from running water to bursts of compressed air, but it didn't seem to be doing any good.

Then Robin had stopped breathing, and Bruce decided it was time to call in reinforcements.

"We're here," Bruce said into his radio. "Where is she?"

 _"On her way, sir,"_ Alfred's voice said in his ear. _"My phone call woke her. She needs some time to get dressed and drive over."_

Bruce lifted Robin's limp, unresponsive body into his arms and sealed the car behind him, walking swiftly toward the entrance. It was well past even Leslie's extended hours, so the front door was locked. Bruce didn't pause to try his hand at picking it; he just turned slightly, hitting it shoulder-first without breaking his stride, and felt the reinforced frame splinter around him as he slammed through. Partly it was the binding giving him extra power, and partly it was good, old-fashioned, perfectly-human adrenaline.

"Did you tell her it was urgent?" Bruce demanded, flicking light-switches with his free hand as he carried Robin to the operating room, where the emergency equipment was most likely to be.

 _"She said she wouldn't have gotten up at this hour at all, for anyone else."_

Leslie had been his father's best friend, a familiar presence from _before_ , and Bruce trusted her as much as he was capable of trusting anyone, these days. She had never stopped being his primary-care physician, even after she moved down here and stopped seeing regular patients, even after Bruce aged out of her original discipline of pediatrics. He'd simply asked, and she had made an exception for him. She was one of the only people to have ever done so for _him_ , and not for his checkbook. She wouldn't even take money from him, not directly—he was forced to donate anonymously, and never in suspiciously large quantities—even though he could have funded her little charity project indefinitely, if she'd let him.

They didn't speak often, these days, not outside of clinical conversations about Bruce's health. Still, there had always been a connection between them, a tacit understanding that the course of both their lives had been dramatically altered by the same single act of senseless violence. Bruce's entire personality had shifted in the aftermath, and Leslie knew him well enough to see it, even if she didn't know exactly what Bruce was doing with his nights. Leslie's change had been more subtle, but no less complete; she had abandoned a promising career and the glitz of Gotham's elite to spend her days—and more often, her nights—sifting through the worst of the city's ugly corners, trying to hold back the flood one teaspoon at a time.

Even Alfred, despite the sudden responsibility of raising an already-difficult child on his own, hadn't been affected in the same way. The murder of his employers hadn't shifted his priorities, or shaken his world-view, or otherwise fundamentally changed his day-to-day existence, save for the ways in which Bruce's incipient crusade had forced him to adapt. Alfred's watershed moment must have come earlier, when he'd decided to trade in his suspiciously-vague military and/or government career for a butler's suit and a tea tray. Bruce didn't know why, and he had never asked; in the end, it didn't matter. By the time Thomas and Martha Wayne were killed, Alfred had already survived his crucible, whatever it had been.

Leslie had gone through hers at Bruce's side. They might not always agree on how best to save, or serve, Gotham—Leslie had been known to willingly stitch together a confessed gang-member that the Batman was forced to put back in the hospital a week later—but their intentions, at least, had always been aligned. From the very beginning, she had been their back-up plan for any injuries that were both beyond Alfred's expertise and impossible to satisfactorily explain to the proper authorities. When Alfred had asked what Bruce wanted to do, when Robin's condition worsened, Bruce hadn't hesitated. Leslie was the only one he could trust, the only one he _would_ trust, with Robin's life.

Bruce laid Robin down on the padded operating table, his costume garish against the white plastic under the fluorescent lights. Bruce had tried to change Robin's clothes, when they had carried him into the Cave's showers, but every time he attempted to remove the mask or detach the cape he found that it would reassert itself. The glamour was too strong. Until Robin regained consciousness, and deliberately changed it, he was stuck in costume. It was like something from a fairy-tale: a little boy in bright colors, laid out as an offering on an altar, deep in an enchanted sleep. It was kinder than thinking he looked like a body laid out for burial.

"He isn't dead," Bruce said, wondering after the words came out if he was trying to reassure himself, or Alfred. "He's immortal. As long as the binding has a hold on him, he can't die."

Alfred's voice was hesitant. _"Dr. Thompkins will be there shortly. Have you … put any thought into what you're going to tell her?"_

Bruce reached under his cape and pulled out the x-rays that Alfred had taken back in the Cave. He found the back-lit board designed to hold them against a side wall, and turned it on, lining up the images. There were three, in total—one from before they had washed Robin from head to toe, one after, and a third from just before Bruce had put him in the car to come here, after he'd stopped breathing. They showed the progression of the iron in his system as a series of bright, luminous dots, first concentrated around his eyes, nose, and throat, but creeping slowly down his esophagus and settling, finally, in his lungs.

Then there was nothing to do but hover over Robin's motionless form, trying to come up with an explanation for the situation. If Leslie walked in right now, it would be impossible to get her to see anything other than a dead child—a recently dead one, still warm and with color to his skin—but dead just the same, showing no vital signs. She would most likely jump straight into CPR while calling an ambulance, and short of restraining her Bruce wasn't sure how to prevent that. (If he thought a cadre of EMT's or a hospital emergency room would be able to help Robin, he'd have already done that himself.)

If Bruce could at least get Robin _breathing_ again, it might keep Leslie from going instantly into crisis-mode when she walked in the door. But how? Alfred had tried resuscitation already, without result. Would a syringe of adrenaline restart Robin's heart? Would trying to replace the blood he'd lost with a transfusion do any good? Of course, even if Bruce had the equipment and the expertise to rapid-type Robin's blood, there was no guarantee that it would match anything on record. In any case, human blood was _iron_ —that must have been why a single drop of Bruce's could affect Robin so strongly—and iron was the last thing Robin needed more of.

Then again, maybe that single drop of Bruce's blood in Robin's system _was_ the answer.

Bruce brushed Robin's black hair back from his domino mask, watching almost fondly as the glossy black strands bounced back immediately into place. Robin's hair was as much a part of his glamour as his cape and armor and mask, and therefore impervious to change until he woke. It hadn't even gotten wet, when Bruce had carefully washed the blood out of it.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said quietly, and then closed his eyes to concentrate. " _Robin,_ " he said, and his voice rang with power the same way it had at the binding. " _Breathe._ "

There was no theatrical gasp or dramatic return to consciousness. In fact, for the first full second nothing happened at all, and Bruce thought that his gambit had failed. Then, slowly, Robin's chest started to rise and fall in a shallow, tentative rhythm. A whistling sound disturbed the room's silence, the wheeze of air being forced through a swollen throat. After a moment, it was joined by the distant, light thudding of Robin's heartbeat.

"Hello?"

Bruce twitched before he could control his reaction, so focused on Robin that he hadn't noticed the approaching car engine or Leslie's footsteps up the drive. Now that he was listening, he could hear the groan of the broken front door as it swung drunkenly in its smashed frame, followed by Leslie's familiar raised voice.

"Alfred?" she called, stepping inside the waiting room down the hall. "Are you in here?"

Bruce roughened his voice into Batman's growl and announced, "Back here."

Leslie entered the operating room warily, keeping her back to the wall and sliding in sideways, one hand inside her purse where Bruce was sure she carried a stun gun or at least a bottle of pepper spray. She did a scan of the interior as she came in, eyes flicking first to the corners and then checking the refrigerated drug locker before moving into a more general sweep. The moment her eyes hit the large, black form of an armor-clad Batman—preposterously out of place, in the brightly-lit room—she recoiled slightly in shock. To her credit, though, she pushed through it and continued to scan, alighting on Robin's unconscious form on the operating table before moving through the rest of the space to ensure they were alone.

Leslie was in her late fifties now, the same age that Bruce's parents would have been if they were still alive, and it showed in the dusting of gray at her hairline and the lines around her mouth and nose. It suited her, in a way that the girlish good looks of her thirties never had. It had been easy to underestimate Leslie Thompkins, then, although nobody had ever been stupid enough to do it twice. She had always been the rough edges, the pragmatic sharp corners, to Thomas Wayne's gentle, idealistic charisma; it was why they had worked so well together. Losing him hadn't made her any softer, even if she _had_ dedicated the back half of her career to a hopeless crusade in his name. She despised nonsense, offered respect only where it was earned, and was always compassionate—but rarely _kind_. Anyone who assumed that those two things were the same had never worked medicine in Gotham's worst slums.

"You know," Leslie said, removing her hand from her purse. "When Alfred Pennyworth calls me at four in the morning asking for cryptic favors, this is not what I expect to find in my clinic." She stared at him, shaking her head. "You're a month early, still, for Halloween."

"Dr. Thompkins," Bruce said in greeting, still disguising his voice. "I have a situation."

"I noticed," Leslie said, eyes flicking to Robin's still form again. She didn't make any move to help, or come closer. "Apparently, it's the kind of situation that necessitated breaking my front door."

Bruce fought the urge to drop his head. He wasn't six years old anymore, and a broken door wasn't the same as one of Leslie's fine china plates that hadn't performed very well as a Frisbee. "Robin's been poisoned," he said. "Airborne particulates. He's having trouble breathing."

"I can hear that," Leslie said. There was sudden steel in her tone, cold and sharp. "Why isn't he in the hospital?"

"It's complicated," Bruce said. "They'd ask the wrong questions."

Leslie raised her graying eyebrows. "But I won't?"

Bruce swallowed. "Please," he said. The word sounded strange, in Batman's gruff voice. "He's getting worse."

Leslie held out for another few moments, seeming to consider something, before she sighed and walked over to where Robin lay. A stethoscope appeared from somewhere on her person, and she placed it on Robin's chest with practiced, businesslike efficiency. She moved it once, twice, listening carefully, and then took Robin's pulse—at his neck, since his gloves covered his wrists—while staring at her watch. When that was done, looking thoughtful, she lifted Robin's closer arm and let it fall, perhaps to check his unconscious reflexes. Whatever she learned from that made her eyes narrow suspiciously.

"Those are his chest x-rays?" she asked.

Bruce nodded.

She slung the stethoscope over her neck and twisted her hair up into a clip as she walked over to the back-lit board, then reached back into her purse and came out with a pair of glasses. Once they were in place, she crossed her arms and studied the film with a frown. "What am I looking at, here?" she asked, pointing to the trail of bright sparks.

"Iron," Bruce said. He had stayed by Robin's side, but had turned to keep Leslie in his field of vision. "Small shavings—dust, almost. The Joker threw it in his face and he breathed it in."

Leslie's frown grew deeper, settling into the familiar lines around her nose and eyes. "Iron isn't toxic, not unless it's present in much greater quantities than this."

Bruce hesitated. "He's allergic," he said.

Leslie turned over her shoulder and just looked at him. "Allergic," she repeated.

Bruce ignored her skepticism. "We need to get it out of his lungs," he said.

"Siderosis isn't dangerous," Leslie insisted. "As far as particulates in the lungs go, iron is one of the safest. Nobody treats it, because it doesn't cause any symptoms."

"He's—"

Leslie lifted a finger to point at him. " _Don_ _'t_ say allergic."

"Unconscious _,_ " Bruce said, through clenched teeth.

"That doesn't make any sense."

"Humor me," Bruce snapped. "Pretend it's something else, something that _is_ dangerous." He did his best to rein in his temper and speak calmly; antagonizing Leslie wouldn't help anyone, Robin least of all. "How would you go about removing it?"

Leslie rocked back a bit on her heels. "Honestly?" she asked. "I don't know. Short of surgically going in to take a tissue sample, like for a biopsy …" She trailed off. "Well, since it's iron, I suppose it's magnetic."

Bruce flashed through the possibilities, eyes widening. "An MRI machine?" In his head, nightmare visions began to play of iron particles being pulled through Robin's chest in a spray of blood. It was better than the alternative, and Robin would heal—presumably—but that didn't make the idea attractive.

"No," Leslie said immediately, with a huff of what sounded like disappointment. "That's mostly a myth, unless the metal pieces are larger. Or in the eyes." She pointed to the x-rays. "These are too small and not dense enough to be moved by even the strongest magnetic field. At most they'd heat up and cause burns."

The nightmare vision in Bruce's head shifted to cherry-red iron particles searing into the soft tissue of Robin's chest cavity, and he forcibly pushed the images away. "What are you suggesting, then?"

Leslie crossed the room to one of the locked metal cabinets that held surgical tools. "This isn't really in my area of expertise, these days, but I have done it once or twice as a diagnostic aid when the situation … Aha!" She won her tussle with the drawer, opening it to pull out what looked like a thin, flexible cable, with a small plastic bulb on one end. "An endoscope, for taking internal pictures," she explained, holding it up. "We thread it through the trachea, down into the lungs. Only instead of a camera at the tip, we attach—"

"A magnet," Bruce finished. It would have to be an exceptionally strong one, to attract the iron shavings and not lose them somewhere in the esophagus or sinus canals. The procedure itself would be lengthy and tedious, bringing out the particles a few at a time. They'd have to do more x-rays in between, to show them where to aim and how much was left to remove. "Difficult."

Leslie nodded, with a little shrug. "But it's not a particularly dangerous procedure," she said. "A little muscle relaxant, to loosen the throat, maybe a mild sedative so that he doesn't wake up in the middle and panic—but no real anesthesia. A numbing agent, for the irritation. He might come out of it with a sore throat, some tissue abrasions or a little bleeding, but no real adverse effects or risks."

Bruce looked down at Robin, listening to him struggle to breathe because Bruce had Commanded him to try. "He won't need the sedative," he said. "And I'm not sure the relaxant or numbing agent will do any good, but you can administer them."

Leslie sighed again. "I don't suppose you have any paperwork verifying your right to make medical decisions for him?"

"No," Bruce admitted. "But there isn't anyone else."

"I was afraid of that," she said, removing her glasses and placing them back inside her purse. "Can you fill out his family history and medical profile? Then I just need to do some pre-op blood work, to make sure—"

"No," Bruce said.

"You can't ask me to do a surgical procedure, no matter how benign, without any patient records or medical history." Leslie crossed her arms, settling herself in to fight a serious battle. "He could _actually_ be allergic to something, or have a bad reaction, or the drugs might mix poorly with something already in his system. It would be unconscionable."

"I'm not sure blood work would tell you anything," Bruce said, uneasy. "He's unconscious from a little iron in his lungs that you said yourself shouldn't be harmful. Why would you expect him to react normally to anything else?"

Leslie's eyes narrowed. "That's only true if I believe that there's nothing else wrong with him, which I'm not sure I do."

Bruce hesitated again, but this wasn't Gordon asking inconvenient questions. This was Leslie, his father's oldest friend, who had sat beside Bruce at his parents' funeral, and—along with Alfred—had kept away the vultures who wanted a piece of him when he was too vulnerable to defend himself. They weren't close anymore, but that wasn't the sort of thing that Bruce would ever forget.

"He's not human," Bruce said quietly.

"He's—what?"

"Robin," Bruce said, laying a protective hand on the boy's arm. "He's not human. That's why I can't take him to the hospital."

Leslie just stared at him.

Silently, Bruce reached down and peeled off Robin's domino mask. He showed it to Leslie, and then threw it casually to the floor.

"What is that supposed to—"

"Watch," Bruce interrupted.

After a moment, the mask on the floor rippled like something seen from underwater, and then vanished. Bruce pointed, and Leslie's gaze followed his finger to Robin's face—where the mask sat, just as it had before.

Leslie was silent for nearly fifteen solid seconds. Bruce counted them, trying to be patient.

"Okay," she said eventually. "Someday you are telling me that story. From the _beginning_." She visibly shook herself, dispelling her shock and returning to what mattered. "I'll do the pulmonary endoscopy, if you can bring me a magnet that's small enough and powerful enough to work."

Bruce nodded. He turned his head slightly to indicate that he wasn't talking to Leslie, and asked, "Did you get that?"

 _"I think we have something that will suffice, sir,"_ Alfred's voice said in his ear. If there was any reproach in his tone for blurting out Robin's secret, it was well-hidden. _"Dismantling one of the magnetic smoke grenades, perhaps."_

Bruce turned his attention back to Leslie. "We have something. Grab what you need and we'll go."

It was Leslie's turn to hesitate. "It would be better to do it here," she said. "I have all my equipment, a sterile environment—"

"We have a medical suite," Bruce interrupted. "And the sun's coming up in less than two hours."

Leslie seemed torn, but she nodded and began assembling tools and bottles of drugs. "Grab those x-rays," she said absently, while searching for a bag that would hold everything. "I take it you have a way to take more, when we need them?"

"Yes," Bruce said. He had already tucked the film back where it had come from, and was in the process of lifting Robin into his arms. He was expecting it, by now, but the lack of any real weight to Robin's body still unnerved him; it was like trying to carry a helium balloon that might float free at any moment. "The car's in the alley next door. Come when you're ready."

He was about to step out of the room and into the hallway when Leslie's voice stopped him.

"You should have told me, you know," she said, sounding somehow hurt, or maybe just disappointed. "A long time ago."

Bruce turned back, confused.

Something must have shown on his face, even through the cowl, because she shook her head at him. "I'm not stupid, Bruce," she said softly. "Alfred doesn't call in favors for very many people, and I _do_ know what your chin looks like." A small, slightly bitter smile touched half of her mouth. "A skiing accident? I should have known. What was it really?"

With anyone else, Bruce would have at least attempted to dissemble. With Leslie, there wasn't any point. She wouldn't have said anything, if she wasn't already sure. Denying it wouldn't convince her, just make her angry.

"Bane," he admitted.

Leslie's mouth went thin and white. She'd seen his x-rays, watched his surgery, scheduled his physical therapy. She knew, better than anyone, that Bruce standing here in the Batman suit simply wasn't possible. "You healed," she said, in confusion and wonderment.

Bruce glanced down at the boy in his arms. "Thanks to him."

"Well, in that case," Leslie said, her smile turning a little more warm, a little more genuine, "I'll do my best for him."

"I never doubted that, Leslie," Bruce said, and carried Robin to the car.

/~*~/

It was midmorning before Leslie was satisfied that all the iron had been successfully removed from Robin's lungs. The modified endoscopy had been as long, tedious, and difficult as Bruce had predicted, but Leslie's focus and determination had never wavered. She studied the final round of x-rays for the better part of ten minutes, searching for the tiniest hint of a bright spark, before she declared that they were finished. For a woman who had been roused in the middle of the night, hit with not one but _two_ startling revelations, and who was fast approaching typical retirement age besides—not that Bruce thought for a moment that she had any intention of quitting her work until the day she fell over dead in her clinic—she had done flawless work.

Then again, Bruce had expected no less of the indomitable Leslie Thompkins. His father, Bruce thought, would have been smiling.

Alfred stepped in once the instruments were disinfected and Leslie was washing her hands, offering a pot of tea, a light brunch, and a long overdue conversation as he ushered Leslie upstairs to the Manor proper. Bruce knew without having to ask that Alfred would let her unwind from the surgery before driving her back to her clinic, where a discreet contractor would already be working to repair her front door. Alfred was impeccable with those kinds of small details.

That freed Bruce to focus on Robin. His breathing had gotten noticeably easier as soon as Leslie had begun taking iron out of his lungs, which had been proof of concept enough if Leslie needed any. By the time she was painstakingly tracking down the last few particles, Robin might have been peacefully asleep, his heartbeat and respiratory rhythm as steady as a metronome. Bruce took that as a sign that Robin's body was healing the residual damage, and Leslie's professional opinion agreed. Robin would wake up on his own, in time. He was out of the woods.

Bruce carried him upstairs, even though Robin was still wearing his cape and mask and armor—a security risk that Bruce normally wouldn't have allowed, despite the Manor's relative seclusion—and placed him in the center of the bed in his room. He toyed briefly with pulling down the covers and tucking Robin in, but ultimately decided to leave him on top of the quilt instead. He didn't want to make Robin feel trapped or hemmed in, not when the act of waking up would itself be unsettling for someone who had never fallen asleep before.

Then it was just a matter of waiting. Bruce pilfered one of the stiff armchairs from the library and placed it in the back corner of Robin's bedroom, between the door and the windows, and sat down to watch Robin breathe.

Alfred appeared sometime later, with a lunch tray and a pile of neglected paperwork from the office. It was clear that he would prefer to coax Bruce into sleeping for a bit, but that he'd taken stock of Bruce's mental state and declared that a lost cause without bothering to actually have the fight about it. He'd moved on to fuel and distractions, for which Bruce was grateful. Alfred hadn't been there, hadn't seen Robin bloody and screaming on the floor, and Bruce wasn't sure that he could explain it. Instead, he took the food and the folder as the olive branch they were, and even managed to be productive for a while.

He had completed around half of the annual personnel reviews that Lucius had been pestering him about for the last two weeks, and was considering moving onto the minutes from last month's board meeting, when Robin woke. All told, it was a little more than fourteen hours between the moment the Joker incapacitated Robin in the news studio and the moment that he regained consciousness in his bed. Bruce had been prepared for shock, panic, residual pain, confusion, or a mix of all of the above, considering the situation. He was not prepared for what actually happened.

One moment, Robin was lying on the perfectly-made bed, looking out of place in his bright colors, conspicuous against the Manor's dark wood and earthy tones. The next, Robin was crouched in the middle of the bed, barefoot and bare-chested, one hand on the mattress for balance and the other spread wide in a defensive gesture. His fingernails were a dark, slate gray and much too long, clawlike. His hair was wild, sticking up in unruly tufts, unwashed and uncombed. His eyes were wide but the pupils were too small, vertical slashes of black in a too-blue iris. His lips were pulled back in a snarl, and his teeth were lightly pointed.

"Robin?" Bruce asked, heart in his throat as the papers he'd been flipping through fell haphazardly to the floorboards.

Robin snapped his head around to face Bruce, a hiss exploding from behind his bared teeth. The muscles in his shoulders and ribcage tensed, as if he was about to spring into an attack. For the first time in a long time, Robin looked _inhuman_ , a creature rather than a boy _._

"Easy," Bruce said, hands up in surrender. The force of a Command tingled at the base of his throat, but he wouldn't hurt Robin again, not after what he'd already been through today. "Do you remember what happened?"

In answer, Robin leapt forward. The move was as fast and as impossible to counter as Bruce had always suspected it would be, if it ever came to a real fight between them. The only thing that saved Bruce in that first moment was Robin's lack of finesse or skill, as if he'd forgotten every combat lesson they'd ever had. Robin just jumped on him, careless and wild, and Bruce was able to roll sideways to deflect the momentum of the hit. They fell out of the chair together, landing on the floorboards with a muted thump, Bruce on his back with Robin crouched over him, one hand on his throat and one pulled back to strike.

"It's okay, Robin," Bruce said quickly, hands still open and defenseless. "You're okay, now."

Slowly, the threatening hiss faded out to silence. Robin's hand on Bruce's throat loosened, and his other hand dropped from its attack pose. He blinked once, twice, and then kept his eyes closed for the space of a single deep breath. His image rippled, and now he was wearing a miniature copy of Bruce's sweats and t-shirt and sneakers. His hair fell into place in perfectly-behaved black waves. His nails retreated back to just past the tips of his fingers. When he opened his eyes, they were the familiar pale-blue and speckled, with round pupils.

Bruce let his hands fall to the floor with another muted thump, only now realizing that he'd been holding his breath. "How do you feel?" he asked, not daring to move yet, since Robin was still crouched over him.

"Master Bruce?" Alfred's voice said, his light footfalls approaching quickly down the hall. "I thought I heard—" He paused as he stepped into the room and took in the scene, Bruce on the ground and Robin hovering threateningly over him.

Robin tensed again, eyes wide.

Bruce, hesitant, said, "Alfred, maybe you should—"

But it was too late. The air shimmered, and Robin was gone.

/~*~/

"What about the binding itself?" Alfred asked, fretting in a very Alfred-like way: When in doubt, cook something. It was lemon meringue tarts this time, as if Robin might smell them from wherever he had disappeared to, and come home for a taste. Although it was more likely that Alfred had deliberately chosen something that was complicated enough to keep his hands busy for a while. "Can you use it to find him, the way that he can always find you?"

Bruce shook his head from his spot by the kitchen phone. His fingers jabbed with calm, furious precision on the numbered keys. "I've been trying," he said. "But I can't get a coherent sense of direction from it. He's just—" _Gone,_ his mind whispered, but his throat closed on the word.

"Where _could_ he have gone, sir?" Alfred asked, elegant hands arranging mixing bowls and oven pans with perfect, forced poise. "He's never been anywhere in the city that wasn't a rooftop or an alleyway."

"I know." Bruce held the phone up to his ear, only half-listening to the line ringing on the other end. "And it's not like he has a lot of friends who would take him in. He only knows three people, other than you and me."

Alfred nodded, then went still and craned his head to listen. When Bruce got Jim Gordon's personal voice-mail message, for the third time in the last ten minutes, Alfred's face somehow fell without moving at all. "You're _sure_ Miss Kyle hasn't seen him?"

"Not that she's telling me," Bruce said, slamming the so-far useless phone into the wall dock. He didn't really believe Selina would lie to him when he was obviously worried, but angry or scared kids who were running away from home were something of a soft spot, for her. Bruce wouldn't put it past her to hide Robin from him, if she thought that was in Robin's best interest. Although he hoped that if that was the case, she would at least tell him that Robin was safe, rather than claiming ignorance entirely. "That just leaves Clark, but he isn't even in the country right now. Some kind of natural disaster in Indonesia. I caught a glimpse of him on the news coverage, earlier."

Alfred looked thoughtful. "Can Robin travel that far, when he vanishes?"

Bruce felt his teeth begin to grind together, and forcibly stopped himself. "I don't know," he said, hating that phrase even more than usual at the moment. He took a deep breath that didn't really help to calm him down. "Maybe I should hope for that. At least I know Clark will keep him safe, and bring him home when he can."

Alfred paused, leaving lemon filling sitting forlorn in a mixing bowl. "Maybe we're approaching this the wrong way," he said. The wooden spoon began a slow, hesitant circuit, a steady scraping accompaniment to his words. "If we knew why he ran, maybe we'd be able to figure out where he went."

Bruce's hand was hovering over the phone, ready to dial Selina _again_ , just to make sure, but he forced himself to take a step back and think. "It could be a lot of things," he said, and started brain-storming out loud. "He was hurt, maybe for the first time—that's traumatic, and could cause a flight response. He might be feeling vulnerable, if he'd previously thought nothing _could_ hurt him. Maybe he's going to ground somewhere he feels safe?"

Alfred hummed a bit, seeming to consider it, before turning his attention back to his bowl and speeding up his stirring hand. "He must have had some prior experience with pain, sir," he said quietly. "Or he wouldn't have been so skittish around you, at the beginning."

Bruce grimaced. He tried not to think about those first uncertain weeks, when Robin had flinched every time Bruce turned too quickly or raised his voice. "So it's something else, then." He began to pace back and forth in front of the marble counter while Alfred adjusted his oven settings. "The first thing he did when he woke up was attack me, but it wasn't purposeful. He was—he was disoriented, Alfred. I don't think he knew me, at first."

Alfred checked the consistency of his resting pie crusts, already half-baked and laid out in the cooking tray, waiting to be filled. "A reaction to Dr. Thompkins' drugs?" he suggested. "Or retrograde amnesia, perhaps. That isn't uncommon, with serious injuries."

"Then why did he _stop_?" Bruce asked, still pacing. "If he didn't recognize me, I should be dead. Or close, at least, depending on when exactly the binding kicks in to stop him from killing me early."

"It must have been an instinct," Alfred said. He began spooning the lemon filling into the tarts, one perfect dollop at a time. "All those lessons about not hurting people when he doesn't have to—maybe they finally stuck."

Bruce paused, caught mid-stride in the middle of the kitchen, as Alfred began putting his trays back into the oven. He was thinking back to last night, to the look of horror on Robin's face as he watched the Joker. At the time, it had seemed like a perfectly reasonable reaction to the Joker's unpredictable cruelty, but outside the heat of the moment it didn't make as much sense. Since when did Robin care about saving people, except as a fun exercise or a way to humor or please Bruce? And yet, when even Bruce wouldn't have blamed him for doing nothing, Robin had fought through incapacitating pain to save a roomful of hostages he didn't know. He'd seemed genuinely distressed afterward, until Bruce confirmed that everyone was safe.

Why? What had changed, and when?

Was _that_ what Robin was wondering, right now? Was that why he'd run, confused and desperate?

"Sir?"

Bruce whirled to face Alfred. "I think I know where he might be."

/~*~/

Bruce had delayed leaving just long enough to throw together a rudimentary civilian disguise, seeing as it was late afternoon and the sun was still a few hours from setting. He doubted any opportunistic tabloid reporter would see Bruce Wayne underneath the old, worn sweatshirt and baseball cap, especially given the way he was slouching to hide his height. He looked as much as a decade younger than he really was, closer to a college kid than a Fortune 500 CEO, but he kept his head down when he passed traffic cameras, just in case. Not that the cops would be paying any attention to the boring four-door sedan, six or seven years out of date, that needed new tires and a serious wash.

He parked it on the curb a block away, and didn't lock it. If someone wanted to steal it, that wouldn't particularly slow them down, and Bruce had more important things to worry about than a car he kept only for camouflage in the first place. Alfred could replace it, and maybe someone who really needed the cash would have an unexpectedly good day. In this neighborhood, boosting a car was a valuable life skill, like knowing how to balance a checkbook or sew a button.

Bruce approached the building from the burned-out, fallen-in north side, where he could step over the remains of the outer wall without the benefit of a door or window. The smell was as strong as Bruce remembered, wet ashes and stale smoke, with a fresher layer of dried blood coming from the floor no one had bothered to clean. The shell of the second story looked even less stable than it had a few months ago, the remaining beams warped and cracking as they stretched out over the center of the building, like exposed ribs.

Robin was sitting on one of those, still dressed in the sweatpants and t-shirt he'd copied from Bruce back at the Manor, although he'd dismissed the sneakers to leave his bare feet dangling over the drop.

Bruce took a moment to let his relief wash over him, glad that his hunch had paid off and that Robin seemed unhurt, at least. Carefully, he took a few more steps into the half-burnt first floor, craning his head back to look up at the boy above him.

"Robin?" he called.

"I almost killed three men, right where you're standing." Robin's voice was strangely muted, as if the air were swallowing it up. "Do you see the bloodstain, where I broke the driver's leg and it poked through the skin?"

Bruce didn't look away. "I can smell it," he admitted.

Robin leaned back, hands braced on the edge of the beam, and swung his legs back and forth. "I would have done it, if you hadn't stopped me." He stared up at the smoke-stained ceiling, at the shattered sunbeams filtering through cracks in the roof. "I remember how it felt. Killing them would have been easy. It would have been _fun_."

Bruce felt the hairs on his arms stand up, all at once. "You were protecting me," he said quietly.

"Was I?" Robin's legs slowed, then stopped swinging altogether. "Or was I just angry that they were trying to break my new toy?"

Bruce didn't know how to respond to that. Instead, he climbed up onto a relatively-intact piece of furniture—the remnants of a reading table, maybe, or the checkout counter—and used it to jump to the outer ring that was all that remained of the second floor. When he landed, the whole library shuddered under his shoes, and the beam Robin was using as a perch trembled alarmingly.

"I can remember it so clearly," Robin said, still sounding oddly detached from the surroundings. "Not just what happened, but what I was thinking. How it felt. How disappointed I was when you intervened."

Carefully, with ginger footsteps, Bruce crossed the distance to where Robin was sitting. He wasn't sure if the half-burned beam could hold them both, but he also figured a one-story fall wouldn't hurt either of them, at least not for long. A moment later, he was sitting at Robin's side, separated by barely six inches but deliberately not touching him.

"It wasn't that long ago," Robin continued. He sniffed once, turning his face to the side away from Bruce. "Less than six months. That isn't much even by mortal standards."

Bruce opened his mouth, but then closed it without speaking. Robin must have felt him coming, or at the very least heard him walking up from the car. If Robin wanted to disappear again, he could have. He still could, if he changed his mind. Some part of him must have wanted to talk. The least Bruce could do was listen.

"But I look back now and I can't—" Robin's voice broke off, and suddenly he was laughing. It wasn't the eerie giggle of an otherworldly creature, but it wasn't the carefree laugh of a human child, either. It was something different entirely, something bitter and angry and desperate. "I can't remember _why_. I don't understand my own memories."

Robin finally turned to look at Bruce, and there were tears on his cheeks. The whites of his eyes were red, as if he'd been rubbing them, and his face was puffy and swollen. Bruce didn't think it was from iron exposure, this time.

"The way the Joker acted," Robin said, "the way he thought—like all those people, they didn't matter to him except as pieces in the game he was playing with you." He shook his head, and more tears welled up in his eyes. "Curious, and cruel, and _gleeful_ with it."

Bruce realized suddenly what this was really about. Part of him wanted to argue, to shift the conversation in a safer direction, to tell Robin about Alfred's lemon meringue tarts or offer to play tag— _anything_ but sit here, helpless, while Robin confronted the truth of his own nature.

"A lack of empathy," Robin said. "That's what you called it." He looked down at his knees, and slowly his feet started to kick again. "That was me, when we met," he added, his voice small and soft and almost afraid. "Wasn't it?"

Bruce reached over and put his hand on Robin's shoulder, the lightest possible touch. "You weren't that different from him at first, no," he admitted. His hand squeezed slightly, a variation in pressure almost too small to be felt. "But you learned better. I don't think the Joker can."

"How?" Robin asked, and his voice was getting stronger now. "I shouldn't be capable of change, of learning, of _empathy_. "

"Everybody changes, especially—"

"Don't patronize me," Robin snapped, and jumped to his feet, shrugging out from under Bruce's hand. "I am _not_ a child." His image flickered, and for a moment he was the creature from earlier, when he woke in his bedroom, inhuman and terrifying. "Do you know how long I have walked this earth? How long I have lived, just as I am, immortal, unchanging?" He scoffed. "I have more in common with the night-sky stars than I do with you, mortal man."

Bruce was silent for a moment, considering. "Once, maybe," he said, calm and soothing. "Not anymore, I think."

Robin deflated, his image flickering back to the boy Bruce recognized. "And you're proud of that, aren't you?" he asked, bitter again. "The mighty Bat who chained a demon, and taught it how to dance."

That hurt, but Bruce didn't dare flinch. This wasn't about him. "You saved seventeen lives yesterday," he said instead. "You might have been dying, but you were more worried about the hostages than you were about yourself." He swallowed past the lump in his throat, remembering that moment when he had turned to face the Joker, putting his faith in the boy on the floor behind him. "I am proud, Robin. Of _you_."

Robin's face crumpled, and he was crying in earnest now. "Don't do that," he said, his voice creaking around a sob in his throat. "Stop making it worse. Just—just _stop!_ "

"Stop what?" Bruce said, bewildered.

"Don't you get it?" Robin demanded. Tears dripped from his chin as he crossed his arms tightly over his chest, like he was trying to hold in the pain. "You're making me—you're making me _care_. And I didn't even notice that it was happening, until I saw what not-caring looks like, and remembered what I used to be."

"It's not a bad thing," Bruce said gingerly. "You have the power to help a lot of people, if you decide you want to."

"You're still not getting it." Now Robin was shaking his head. "It's the binding," he said, almost spitting the words at Bruce. "That drop of your blood in my veins? It's mimicking mortality, just enough to enable change, to give me empathy, to let me care." He met Bruce's gaze, heedless of the tears caught in his eyelashes. "Not too much, but just enough—enough that I'll know what I'm doing, now, when I kill you."

Bruce leaned back, feeling almost like he'd been slapped. All his plans, all his hopes, and he'd never thought to look at it from that angle before. It had occurred to Bruce that teaching Robin morals might not save his life, that the binding itself might not give Robin a choice in the matter, but he'd never followed that thought through to its logical consequence. Instead of an inhuman, capricious predator, delighting in killing someone who'd kept it on a leash for a year, Bruce would be leaving behind a little boy who had been forced to murder the first friend he'd ever had.

"Do you want to know the _worst_ part?" Robin asked, a hint of desperate humor back in his voice. "When the binding breaks, all this—" He gestured to himself, particularly toward his heart. "—goes away. I'll revert back to how I was before. I'll remember killing you, I'll remember being upset about it, but I won't understand _why_." He laughed again, angry and unsettling. "The same way that I don't understand right now why the me of last spring would have killed three men with a smile on my face, just because they had annoyed me."

Bruce, still reeling, clutched at the implied silver lining. "But if you know already that you'll stop caring, when this is over, that you can go back—"

"No, you still don't understand _._ " Robin was shaking his head again, obviously frustrated. He was silent for a moment, thinking, and then he said, "How about this: Pretend that the binding worked differently. Pretend that instead of killing you, when your year is up, I take you with me. You become like one of my kind."

Robin paused, giving Bruce a few seconds to imagine what that would be like. Instead of a death sentence, a new life in another world. Instead of an ending, a new beginning, far away from Gotham's grime and shadows. Immortality. _Vibrancy_ , in a way he could only partly taste through the binding, now entirely his. Forever.

"The price is that you have to kill Alfred, before we can leave."

Bruce went cold.

"But it's okay, right? Because you won't care, afterward," Robin told him. "You won't even understand why you thought you should. You'll walk away with his blood on your hands and a smile on your face, and nothing will ever bother you again." He wiped at his wet cheeks. "You'll be _free_."

"That's not …" Bruce swallowed. For a moment he couldn't breathe. "It wouldn't be me," he said eventually. "The thing that was left—it might have my name and my memories, but it wouldn't be me. Not the parts of me that matter."

Robin spread his hands, as if to say, _Finally, he gets it._ "This person that I am, right now, this bundle of thought and emotion and empathy that you've created … When this is over, he goes away." Very slowly, Robin sat back down next to Bruce. "There will be something left, with my form and my memories, but it won't be _me._ I'll just … stop being. Like I never was at all." His hands were shaking. "It feels like—like—"

"Dying," Bruce said, quiet and horrified. "When the binding breaks, we _both_ die."

At that, Robin started to cry again. Bruce wanted to reach out, to find some way to comfort him—but even if he knew how, he knew it wouldn't be welcome. Not from him. Not when this was his fault.

"I don't want to stop being me," Robin said through tears, his voice quiet and small. "I don't want to kill you." He looked down, at his dangling feet and the ten-foot drop below them. "I don't want to leave. I _like_ it here."

"I'm sorry," Bruce whispered.

Robin closed his eyes. "I don't want to die," he said. "I don't want to die, Bruce. It's not fair."

"I'm sorry," Bruce repeated. It wasn't enough, but it was all he had. He was just as helpless now as he'd been last night: Robin in pain, and nothing Bruce could do to make it stop, to make it hurt any less. In that moment, if he could have, he'd have taken it all back. A broken spine was nothing, compared to this.

The sun set, and night fell around them, long before they went home.

/~*~/

Alfred knew something was wrong, when Bruce and Robin finally trudged their way back to the Manor after the long hike out of the city, but he tactfully didn't ask any questions. He just ushered them inside and fetched tea and hot chocolate, and set about working something out for a very late supper.

Robin didn't apologize for worrying Alfred, because that would have forced them to talk about it, but he took the hot chocolate with a weary, forced smile. When he said, "Thank you, Alfred," they all knew what he meant.

Alfred's quiet, "Of course, young sir," was as good as forgiveness.

Bruce accepted his tea with a simple nod of acknowledgment, although he didn't miss the shift of Alfred's eyebrow that said he expected answers, at some point. Bruce promised them with a tilt of his head, but not until tomorrow. Everything was still too raw, right now.

Alfred wasn't entirely satisfied by that, but he graciously withdrew. Bruce expected Robin to follow him, to take up his usual perch on the top of the kitchen cabinets and try to sneak tastes of whatever Alfred was cooking—but he didn't. With a glance at Bruce, not quite meeting his eyes, Robin wandered off toward the stairs. Bruce suspected that he wasn't headed to his room, but rather simply to walk through the Manor. It was large enough, after all, to get lost in.

"Dinner, soon," Bruce called after him, a gentle reminder.

"I'll smell when it's ready," Robin said, without turning back, and disappeared int the shadows at the top of the staircase.

That left Bruce with phone calls to make, the first of which was to Selina to tell her that he'd found Robin, and that no one—Robin included—had been hurt. It wasn't a lie, assuming he was talking about physical pain. She didn't particularly sound like she'd been worried, but Bruce suspected she had been, just the same. When she came by the Manor these days, she made it a point to play a round of hide and seek with Robin, before leaving. Bruce hadn't encouraged it, per se, but he didn't try to stop it either; Robin _liked_ hide and seek, and he wouldn't play with Bruce because he claimed the binding interfered.

Like Alfred, Selina knew Bruce well enough to tell that something was wrong, even over the phone. Unlike Alfred, she tried to pry, but she didn't get anywhere. She had plenty of connections in Gotham's less-savory corners; she'd hear the rumor about the Joker nearly killing Robin sooner or later, if she hadn't already. Bruce would let her draw her own conclusions about what had happened today, from those. Unless Robin chose to talk to her about it, she had no right to his secrets.

Next, Bruce phoned Jim Gordon to apologize for the three missed calls earlier. Bruce's performance as Gotham's resident idiot-playboy wasn't quite up to par, but he managed to come up with a halfway decent cover on the spot—a club, a girl, a shouted phone-number that must have been a few digits off. The fact that it was midnight probably helped; Gordon was grumpy when he woke to a ringing phone and it wasn't the station.

Bruce was just relieved that Gordon didn't seem suspicious. He reminded himself to use the scrambler and his cell phone, next time. Panicking, no matter how justified, was no excuse for making mistakes like that. What would he have done, if Gordon hadn't just happened to be stuck in court this afternoon? How would he have explained Batman calling on Bruce Wayne's phone line? Would he even have remembered to disguise his voice at all?

Leslie was last, to thank her for her assistance that morning and to let her know that Robin was awake and healing. She was wrapping up her late hours at the clinic, so he got away with just a few sentences and a promise to bring Robin by for her to meet properly, sometime soon—and a promise to call her, the next time he got shot, or stabbed, or thrown through a second-story plate-glass window and fractured his collarbone in three places.

That last one was too specific to be a coincidence. Bruce accused her of going back through his medical file with a new eye for what had caused some of his injuries. She didn't deny it.

 _"I know enough to worry, now,"_ Leslie told him through the phone speaker, her voice low so that none of her patients or volunteer staff would overhear. _"And God help me, Bruce—I was worried before, when I thought you were just an adrenaline junkie with a fondness for ridiculous sports."_

Bruce didn't smile, but for a fraction of a second he almost wanted to. "It's good to have you back, Leslie," he said.

 _"Oh, you stupid boy,"_ Leslie replied, fond and angry in equal measure. _"I never left."_

Dinner that night was a somber, stilted affair. Bruce didn't realize how used he'd gotten to Robin's trademark exuberance until it was muted, leaving the room feeling colder and emptier than it should, like all the color had been washed out of it. If asked, Bruce would have claimed that Robin's energy and ceaseless curiosity were more an annoyance than anything else, that a night without them would have been a welcome reprieve, a return to the Manor's proper peace and quiet. The reality of it was harder to appreciate.

Robin picked apart his salmon with a fork, and pushed rice grains and vegetables around on his plate, but didn't seem to be actually eating. Somehow, that small act of visible despair hit Bruce harder even than his full-blown crying had, earlier. Being upset was at least an active emotion. This listlessness was something else entirely, out of character for the bright-eyed boy who couldn't sit still. Bruce wondered suddenly, horribly, if this was what it felt like to know someone who'd been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Was this what Alfred had felt like, all those months ago in the kitchen, when he realized that Bruce was now living on a timer?

"You should eat," Bruce said eventually, as gently as he could manage. Part of him wondered if he'd ever raise his voice again. It seemed impossible, at this moment, a relic of a prior life. "You had to heal a lot of damage, today."

Robin looked over at him and actually smiled, even if it was tired and sad. "So should you," he said, glancing pointedly at Bruce's plate, which wasn't significantly emptier than his own. "You're the one who hasn't slept in two days."

It might have been a guess, or Alfred might have told on him, but Bruce thought it was more likely that Robin could read the exhaustion in him, even when he was trying to hide it. Or, perhaps, Robin simply understood that Bruce _wouldn_ _'t_ have slept, not while Robin was hurt and unconscious in someone else's care.

Obediently, Bruce lifted a forkful of salmon to his lips. He couldn't have named the spices Alfred had used, not because they weren't superb as usual, but because he simply didn't taste anything. His brain didn't have any attention to spare, for something as trivial as food.

"It is pretty serious," Bruce said, after he'd swallowed, "when _you_ _'ve_ had more sleep than I have, lately."

Robin's fork dropped to his plate with a metallic clink, and suddenly he was laughing. No, he was _giggling_. Not the same eerie, echoing sound he used in the field to startle criminals, but a genuine sign of somewhat-giddy mirth. Bruce didn't think it was really all that funny—almost in poor taste, to joke about Robin being unconscious from his injuries not even a day later—but he only watched Robin giggling for a moment before he was chuckling, too, breathless with it. Maybe it wasn't even about humor. Maybe it was just a release of tension, after everything that had happened.

It didn't last long. Robin's giggles subsided, leaving him with a hitch in his breathing that sounded almost more like a sob than any sort of laughter. He got it under control, though, and eventually picked his fork back up and began at least trying to eat. Without a word, Bruce did the same. Nothing was fixed, nothing was suddenly _okay_ , but the atmosphere in the dining room was somehow lighter, anyway.

By the time Alfred came back to clear the dishes, Robin's feet were kicking underneath the table and Bruce was fussing at him for picking and choosing his vegetables. It might almost have passed for a normal evening, by their standards.

/~*~/

All told, it was nearly two in the morning when Bruce finally headed down the secret elevator to the Cave and began a truncated version of his normal warm-ups. He wanted to take a shower and go to bed, given everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, but between the trip to Metropolis and the Joker's attack, they hadn't done a Gotham patrol yesterday.

Granted, two days off in a row wouldn't be catastrophic, but there were open case files that needed attention. The Scarecrow investigation in particular was in danger of stalling completely without some serious legwork, and leaving Crane on the streets with Halloween approaching seemed like an unmitigated disaster in the making. It would be better to at least do a quick circuit of the city and see which cases might be closed quickly, _try_ to keep his problems from multiplying while he wasn't looking. Stopping crime in Gotham was a never-ending game of whack-a-mole, and he was still recovering from his hiatus last spring; leave the streets unwatched long enough, and he'd be left with more moles than mallets to hit them.

That sounded nice and reasonable, but even inside his own head it rang a little false. He'd taken consecutive nights off in the past, sometimes for much less valid reasons than two days without sleep and a partner being forced to confront his own unexpected mortality. Bruce knew he was pushing himself too hard, but there was an itch under his skin that he couldn't ignore. Something had gotten caught in the back of his head, a whispering refrain he'd been too busy to hear until things with Robin had quieted.

It was telling him to get back on the streets, right now. He had to talk to Gordon, get the details of the gun the Joker had used, see if it could be traced to a supplier that might talk. Get samples of the explosives, and the dummy-explosives too, find out where those had originated. Were they military surplus, or home-made? Figure out how to track the ingredients, or the wiring in the vests, or locate a second-hand electronics boutique that sold wireless handheld transmitters. The information was out there, and it would lead him to the Joker, but he had to go get it, _right now_.

The desire to keep working, even when his body was wearing out, wasn't new, but the burning urgency surprised him. Yes, the Joker was dangerous, and yes, he'd hurt Robin—and Bruce didn't deal in revenge, because he knew how slippery that slope was, but that didn't mean he didn't sometimes _want_ to—but this was something else. The Joker had played out his little game, and he'd be satisfied for a while. He had to be found, but one day wouldn't make a significant difference. Bruce should sleep, and plan, and go after him tomorrow. He _knew_ that.

But the itch under his skin wasn't listening to logic, which meant that this was about something else, something his unconscious mind had pieced together while his conscious one was too busy panicking about Robin's injuries and, later, his disappearance. Someone else might have called it a gut feeling, an intuition, but Bruce wasn't wired that way. He noticed details, made connections. There was always a trail to follow, if he stopped to look for it.

 _Brag, brag, brag, **brag** , _said the Joker's grating voice, clear and sharp in Bruce's memory. _It was insufferable—and yet here you are, safe and sound_.

"Bane," Bruce whispered. "The Joker's in contact with Bane."

"Took you long enough," Robin said. "I was wondering when you'd remember that."

Bruce looked over to find Robin sitting on the weight-lifting bench, obviously waiting for him. Bruce abandoned any pretense of doing a warm-up routine and went for the case that held the armor, instead. The name circled like a biting insect inside his head— _Bane, Bane, Bane_ —and he felt himself slipping into the same obsessive state of mind that had overtaken him after they'd found a vial of Venom in that shipping container, the night he'd first met Clark. Suddenly that felt like a lifetime ago.

"So what's our play?" Robin asked, following along at his heels. "The Joker's gun, maybe? Either he bought it or he borrowed it from somebody, and either way it gives us a place to start looking." He had to skip over into a run for a few steps to keep up with Bruce's long, purposeful strides. "We find the Joker, he leads us to Bane."

"Not us," Bruce said. He palmed open the case and began grabbing pieces of the suit. "Me. I'm going alone."

Robin didn't flinch. "No, you're not. I'm coming with you."

Robin's image had already shifted, leaving him dressed for patrol in armor and cape and mask. The bloodstains were gone, washed clean as if they'd never been there at all. That didn't mean Bruce couldn't still see them, a terrifying overlay on reality, a grisly mental glamour of his very own.

Bruce shook his head. "You've had a trying day."

Robin gave him a flat look, raising one eyebrow over his domino mask as if to say, _Trying? Is that really what we_ _'re going with?_

"You should rest," Bruce tried again. "You've been through enough."

"I don't care," Robin said. "I'm not letting you go after him alone." He crossed his arms over his colorful chest. "Admit it: When Bane's involved, you get stupid. You need me."

Bruce softened, letting his hands fall from where he'd been securing one of his gauntlets. For a moment, even the harsh buzzing of Bane's name in the back of his skull quieted. "Robin, be honest," he said. "Is this even something you want to do? Knowing how it's changing you?"

Robin swallowed, but he didn't hesitate to nod.

"Because if this is about—"

"Bruce," Robin interrupted.

Bruce stopped, and listened.

"For better or worse, I am what you've made of me," Robin said. "I can't change that now, even if I wanted to." He smiled, half-crooked and just a little bit bitter. "Let me be Robin." The smile trembled, but didn't break. "Let me be _me._ While I still can."

Bruce pressed his lips into a thin, flat line. "Will you be okay, when we end up face-to-face with the Joker again, after what he did to you?"

Robin stared right back at him, not missing a beat. "Will _you_ , when we find Bane?" he asked. He didn't wait for an answer, as if he already suspected what it would be. Instead, he took a step forward and put a gloved hand on Bruce's not-yet-armored elbow. "We're not going to find either of them tonight. It'll take time, and it's already late. We're usually wrapping up a patrol, by now, not starting one." He removed his hand, and it felt somehow reluctant. "Part of you _knows_ this is a dumb idea. We can start this tomorrow, when you've had some rest."

Bruce nodded, and began pulling on the final few pieces of the suit. "I know," he said. "But I'm not going to be able to sleep until we do _something_. Even if it's just a start."

Robin stepped back. "Okay," he said. With a visible effort, he pulled his usual persona around himself, wide eyes and bright grin and barely-contained energy. It might have been convincing, to someone who didn't know him. "So what are we waiting for? Let's go find Bane, and end this."

Bruce pulled the cowl down. "While we still can," he echoed.

/~*~/


	12. Chapter 12

The serial number had been filed off the Joker's gun, of course, but that didn't necessarily mean that it couldn't be tracked. Gordon slipped the ballistics report out of the crime lab, once it was ready, and the striations on the bullet linked the revolver to an unsolved double-homicide from eight months prior. The cops had chalked it up to the drug violence prevalent at the time, due to the power-vacuum crisis in the wake of the botched raid at the warehouse, and nobody had bothered with the original case since.

The Joker had already been in Arkham by then, which meant that as far as the GCPD was concerned it was a dead end. Bruce wasn't as constrained in either time or resources, so he kept looking, hoping to figure out where the Joker had obtained the gun, and let that lead him to wherever his path had crossed with Bane's. From that intersection, maybe he could trace Bane's path forward, and end this once and for all.

The double-homicide itself had gone unsolved largely because nobody had looked twice at two more dead lowlifes in Gotham's gutter on the best of days, let alone in the midst of a full-blown drug war. Fortunately, Bruce didn't need a second look to know that something didn't smell right about the case; the first glance was enough to tell him that something didn't add up. A cursory investigation was enough to reveal that the killer was not a fellow drug dealer, as the department report stated, but rather a law enforcement officer trying to cover their tracks. He or she had been counting on nobody caring enough to question the official story, not with so many bodies turning up, not with the victims being people nobody would miss.

Three nearly-sleepless days, two midnight interrogations, and one fingerprint analysis on the shell of a stolen external disk drive later, Bruce and Robin dropped two dozen dirty cops on Gordon's doorstep, along with an inch-thick file on a money-laundering scheme that ran through what seemed like a quarter of the small businesses in town, as well as a racketeering case that went all the way up to the DA's office. They had a string of dead bodies, blackmail material, taped confessions, account ledgers and code books—enough to build a solid court case against maybe eighty or ninety percent of the people involved. If Gordon moved quickly, he might be able to get enough dirt to stick on the rest before they were able to slip out from under the closing net.

Gordon was speechless for the better part of ten seconds, after reading through the evidence that Bruce gave him. He was furious for the next five minutes, wondering out loud if the botched drug raid that had launched the mess last spring had been a costly effort to hide all of this in the first place. Then he was scared shitless for the next half hour, pacing back and forth on the roof of his apartment building in utter silence while Bruce and Robin watched him, well aware that eight good cops had already died just around the edges of this case, let alone going after the dead center of it. Then he rolled up his sleeves and went downstairs to start making phone calls.

"He's a good man," Robin said quietly, impressed. "Isn't he?"

"The best one I know," Bruce admitted, where Gordon couldn't hear him.

They slipped away while Gordon was still trying to get hold of the few men and women in his unit that he thought he could trust. As much as Bruce would have liked to help, this wasn't a fight in which Batman and Robin would have been useful. It had to be done in daylight, in front of the cameras, in front of a judge and a jury, and that wasn't their arena. They had done their best to equip him with weapons, but Gordon had to fight this battle on his own.

Instead, they went back to tracking the gun's progress through Gotham's criminal circles. After being used—by a dirty cop—to put down two drug dealers threatening to expose their operation last spring, it had been sold out of evidentiary lockup by a crooked clerk in a lucrative, if slow-moving, side business. From there it had turned up at a local pawn shop, purchased by a mob enforcer with the colorful name of Blue Giorgio, who had been pulled off the streets for a stint in Blackgate prison for assault in late July, although not with the revolver in question.

A series of visits from the Bat to several people involved in the fringes of the mobs and gangs around which Blue Giorgio had orbited got Bruce a list of known associates, friends, roommates, and enemies who might have taken possession of the gun. He went down the list methodically until he tracked the revolver to another pawn shop, three blocks from the first one, courtesy of an old girlfriend in need of rent money.

From there the trail went cold again until Crime Night, when apparently the pawn shop was hit by looters, or possibly even the Joker himself after his breakout. Either way, the gun wasn't traceable between that point and the shooting at the news studio, and not even a visit from the Bat was enough to make the pawn shop owner admit to selling anything to the Joker.

"Nothing," Bruce said, using the word like a curse as he burst out of the car and into the damp chill of the Cave, ripping the cowl back from his head and flinging sweat droplets behind him. "A week of chasing after the Joker's gun, and we have nothing to show for it."

Robin slipped out of the passenger door, one eyebrow high above the edge of his domino mask. The green leather-like material flickered out of existence a moment later, revealing skeptical blue eyes. "I suppose," he said. "If you don't count the thirty-five arrests so far and the ongoing county-wide investigation that we started because we decided to look into an eight-month-old double murder in our spare time." He shrugged, somehow managing to point with his chin at the twenty-four-hour news channel that Bruce kept on down here, which was gleefully covering the chaos surrounding the nuclear bomb Gordon had dropped on the GCPD and the DA's office a few days earlier. "Sure. Six days of effort, for nothing."

Bruce flopped into the desk chair and rotated it to face Robin, who was still approaching from behind him. "Who taught you sarcasm?"

"Alfred," Robin said with a straight face.

From over by the elevator, Alfred's voice said, "I most certainly did not, young sir," as he approached with post-patrol tea and hot chocolate with marshmallows. After having been read in on the situation with Robin's newly-discovered empathy—and subsequent effective mortality when the binding was broken at the end of their year—the number of little marshmallows seemed to have doubled. None of them had said a word about it, but both of them had noticed. "I'm afraid you have only yourself to blame for that, Master Bruce."

Bruce huffed out something that might have been a laugh, in another life. "I always do."

Robin's demeanor softened as he took his mug. "Okay, so, the Joker's gun didn't lead anywhere." He took a large sip, and Bruce half-suspected that he deliberately ended up with a smear of marshmallow cream on his upper lip, in an attempt to turn Bruce's expression into a real smile. It almost worked. "Other than making sure Captain Jim survives the next few weeks, given all the people who are really, _really_ angry at him right now, what's Plan B?"

"The explosives," Bruce said, and they went back to work.

/~*~/

Robin put up a good front, especially in the field where any criminals they encountered—or Gordon for that matter, who was still periodically spot-checking Robin's state of mind, when he had time—would have been hard-pressed to notice any difference at all, but the new knowledge hanging over their heads couldn't be ignored or suppressed completely. There were times that Bruce came home from the office to find Robin fiddling aimlessly with the tools and gadgets down in the Cave, or simply wandering listlessly through the Manor halls, where a month earlier he would have been running freely across the grounds chasing small animals, doing dangerous acrobatics from the chandeliers, or sliding down the banisters just to run up the stairs and do it again.

Alfred continued his campaign of attempting to cheer Robin up with extra sweets at every opportunity, often surprising him at random times between meals or deliberately seeking him out when he'd disappeared for too long. To Robin's credit, he did his best to brighten up once he realized what Alfred was doing, attempting his best impression of his normal self whenever Alfred slipped him an extra lemon drop or made sure his post-patrol hot chocolate was more marshmallow than liquid. Unfortunately, the three of them were too well-versed in each other's moods and tricks to fool anyone for long, and it was obvious that Robin was upset.

Unspoken, Alfred thanked him for trying with a soft shoulder pat of solidarity, and went off to think of another approach—which turned out to be a gift of some of Bruce's old childhood adventure books, to take Robin's mind off things. It proved to be just the right amount of challenge to his fledgling reading skills, given the somewhat archaic language of the old classics, and for a while Bruce came home to find Robin curled up on a couch, one finger slowly tracing across a line of text as he read about pirates and stormy seas and shipwrecked boys on desert islands.

But even Bruce didn't realize just how bad it really was, until the day he came home from an afternoon meeting at the office and couldn't find Robin in the Manor at all. He wasn't in any of his usual haunts, of late, nor was he hiding in his bedroom. Bruce was briefly worried that Robin had run away again, until Alfred mentioned that he'd seen Robin heading for the secret elevator some time earlier.

Once down in the Cave, Bruce turned on the lights and space heaters by reflex—Robin, of course, didn't precisely need either, unless he was pretending to be human—and found Robin slinking somewhat guiltily away from the workbench area. He immediately tried to be his typical chipper self, brightening and bouncing on his toes and asking, "How was your meeting? Was it boring? I bet it was boring—never mind. Let's do something fun."

Of course, that in and of itself was reason enough for Bruce to know something was seriously wrong. Robin hadn't been that bubbly since the Joker's attack, not even when he was trying to make Alfred feel better.

"What were you doing?" Bruce asked, not unkindly, but curiously.

Robin sighed, as if realizing that he was caught and there was no point trying to dodge it. "Just an experiment," he said, almost in a mumble.

He should have known Bruce wouldn't be satisfied with that answer.

It took some quick footwork and a stern look, but Bruce managed to get past Robin and grab hold of the item he'd been trying to conceal behind himself on the workbench. Once he did, all the breath went out of Bruce in a panicked rush.

It was a small knife, very old and very expensive, a collector's item that Bruce had procured months ago, held in trust against the day he'd need it. After all, they didn't typically make weapons out of pure iron rather than steel, these days, and those that survived were mostly kept in museums and private collections. No one had questioned the eccentric billionaire for buying one on a whim, so there had been no need to explain that he needed it to protect himself from his new, unexpected faerie houseguest.

Bruce had forgotten that he'd even ordered it. Alfred must have packed it up down here in the weapons locker, after it arrived, and neither of them had spared it a second thought since. Robin had stopped being that kind of threat a long time ago.

"I could feel it, from the moment it got here," Robin said, his eyes tracking the blade in Bruce's hands. "Then, after the Joker … Well, I knew what it was, then. Every time you opened the cabinet, I could feel it in there."

Bruce clenched his fist around the hilt, already growing warm from the heat in his hands. "What were you going to do?" he asked, afraid that he already knew the answer.

"This only ends one of two ways," Robin said, still oddly calm. It was like he'd already gotten all of the being upset out of his system, and now he was resigned to his fate. It was probably just the shock settling in, or some type of delayed denial, but at least he wasn't crying. Bruce was pretty sure that would have made this even worse. "You're always after me to look at the situation logically, weigh the variables, and select the course of action that makes the most sense. So let's analyze it."

"Robin, I don't think—"

"I kill you," Robin interrupted, boldly. "Then I revert back to how I was before, which means that effectively, I die too."

Bruce didn't have anything he could say to that.

"Or," Robin said, meaningfully, and nodded toward the knife.

"No," Bruce said immediately.

"It makes more sense," he insisted.

" _No_ ," Bruce repeated, forcefully.

"We don't both have to die, Bruce," Robin said. "If the iron works on me, before our year runs out, I don't even think the binding is voided." He smiled, then. "Don't worry, you'll still be healed."

"You think I care about my spine?" Bruce asked, incredulous.

" _And_ you'll keep the extra power I gave you," Robin continued, as if Bruce hadn't even spoken. "You can go on saving people, protecting your city, the way you're supposed to. Like you did before I came along. Maybe better, even."

"I'm not going to kill you," Bruce said.

"It's one of us, or both of us," Robin said, almost harshly. "Do the math."

"I'm _not_ killing you," Bruce said again, louder, and then flinched. The last thing he wanted to do was yell, or do anything that would make it seem like he was angry. "You can't ask that of me," he added, much more quietly.

Robin hesitated, at that. "I wasn't going to," he said. "I thought—" He stopped, swallowed, and then said, "I thought, maybe Alfred…?"

Bruce felt something hot lodge itself in his throat. "We don't even know if it would work," he said, feeling desperate. "You were—when the Joker—" Bruce couldn't get the words out. "You stopped breathing," he said eventually, helpless. "Until Leslie got the iron out of your lungs, you might as well have been dead. But you woke back up."

That made Robin pause. He licked his lips once, a furtive gesture. "We'd have to leave the knife in my heart, then. Bury me with it." He giggled, nervously at first, then transitioned it into something like the one he used in the field to startle criminals. "Build me a glass coffin in the Cave, maybe. I can be your very own Snow White, eternally asleep. It kind of fits, right? A _fairy_ tale?"

"That's not funny," Bruce scolded, still gentle.

Robin held up two fingers about an inch apart. "No? Not even a little?"

Bruce shook his head. "We have some time, yet," he said. "We'll find another way."

"And if we don't?"

Bruce was silent.

It was Robin's turn to shake his head. "You're being stubborn. I'm right about this, and somewhere deep down you know that."

"I'm not letting you pay the price for the deal that _I_ made," Bruce insisted.

Robin just looked at him, sad and knowing and utterly human, but suddenly not at all like a nine-year-old. "I'm paying the price either way, Bruce," he said softly. "I already paid it. But you don't have to pay it with me."

Bruce ground his teeth together. "Give me time to find a better answer."

Robin sighed. "I wasn't suggesting we do anything tomorrow," he said. It sounded almost wistful. "We still have to find the Joker, and let him lead us to Bane." He nodded toward the knife again. "I just wanted to know that we had the option, when the time comes. I wanted to know if it would work."

Bruce ran his fingers up and down the edge of the blade, feeling the way the metal tugged at his skin. "You don't touch this without my explicit permission," he said flatly. "Ever. Promise me."

Robin's mouth twisted. "Is that a Command?" he asked.

Bruce hesitated. Every instinct he had screamed that he should make it one, that if Robin got in a self-sacrificial mood at the wrong moment, he could do something exceedingly rash that might not be reversible. Still, it didn't feel right. Hurting someone in order to protect them was on the list of acceptable reasons, but in this case Bruce thought it still crossed a line—and he'd made a promise of his own, never to give Robin a Command unless he had _no_ other choice.

"I won't force you, Robin," Bruce said, his voice soft. "But please, promise me?"

That must have been the right approach, because the fight went out of Robin in a rush, like a deflating balloon. "Okay," he said, and his voice trembled a little. "I promise."

Before he could change his mind, Bruce locked the iron knife back inside the weapons cabinet, in the dark corner it had come from. With any luck, they would never take it back out again.

"We'll find another way," Bruce said again, once it was done.

He didn't know if Robin believed him, but the matter was dropped for the moment, and that was good enough for now.

/~*~/

The Joker's explosives turned out to be just as much of a bust as his gun had been, this time without the consolation prize of a massive slate of arrests in the aftermath. It seemed they were mostly handmade, from readily-available materials that could be purchased on the cheap from nearly any hardware store in town. Unlike the fear toxin ingredients they were using to hunt the Scarecrow, there were no federally-mandated lists of suppliers and purchasers, or carefully-tracked shipment manifests that could be used to follow suspicious orders. Anyone could walk into a storefront, pay cash, and anonymously stockpile dangerous explosives.

Robin admitted that this information would probably keep him up, if he slept at night in the first place. Then he immediately demanded that Bruce teach him, not just how to dismantle or neutralize bombs—which Bruce had pretty much expected, at some point—but also how to make them. He wanted to know which ingredients were dangerous, and in which combinations and proportions. He wanted to know how to improvise a charge and detonator if necessary, and how to assemble an explosive from kitchen chemicals in a pinch, not just so that he could counter those if he ever had to, but also so that if he ever ran out of weapons in the field, he could rearm himself, if it ever came to that.

Bruce didn't argue. As a response to trauma, it was actually a surprisingly healthy one—at least by his standards—and Bruce wasn't about to take that for granted right now. He wasn't taking anything for granted at the moment, not where Robin was concerned. A few lessons on bomb-making and disposal wouldn't hurt anyone, and it was probably time to brush up his own skills anyway, considering that it was a field that required a refresher course every few years, as the technology changed. Alfred made a few phone calls, and they learned the latest techniques together. In fact, with his delicate, impossibly-fast fingers and predilection for inhuman stillness when the situation warranted, Robin rapidly outstripped Bruce's own abilities, which had never been much above average in the first place.

While they were doing bomb training in their downtime, they were looking into the Joker's electronics as their last remaining avenue of approach. In ideal cases, circuit boards could be as unique as fingerprints and ballistics, and just as useful to investigations. Unfortunately, the piece the Joker had used as his makeshift detonator was little more than a glorified walkie-talkie, cobbled together from secondhand parts purchased from half a dozen suppliers all over the city. Like the pawn-shop owner with the revolver, none of them would admit to selling to the Joker even after a visit from Batman loosened their tongues.

At this rate, Bruce might have better luck trying to track the iron shavings the Joker had bought from a hobby store. That was about as likely to be a viable lead.

Bruce wasn't giving up, but he wasn't getting anywhere, either. Their patrols stopped being solely Joker-hunts, and they went back to protecting the streets.

As the days passed, Gotham settled, like a calm harbor in the immediate wake of a massive hurricane. Criminals began to poke their heads out to test a stretched-thin police force, only to find that the GCPD had just gone through its crucible and come out stronger on the other side, at last able to trust most of the members who had weathered the fallout from Gordon's investigation. Out on the streets, the drug trade finally balanced out, back in its well-known, well-worn boxes of understandable, predictable evil. The devil you knew, Gordon explained with a grimace, was still a devil—but at least you could set a trap for him and expect him to have the courtesy to show up on time.

Bruce's patience with chemical watch-lists finally paid off, and they nabbed the Scarecrow with just a week to spare before Halloween, and then spent the next four nights trying to find a way to safely dispose of enough fear toxin to poison half the state. Bruce transported enough samples down to the Cave to keep him making antidotes for the next thousand years, at least until Crane changed his formula, and still had a warehouse's worth of crates left to destroy—preferably without releasing toxic vapors into the general population or poisonous sludge into the city sewer system. In the end he had no choice but to admit that he couldn't handle it alone, call in Gordon, and make a surreptitious recommendation that a technology company with the infrastructure to handle dangerous substances be consulted. By the end of the week, Lucius Fox was on the case, and Bruce was breathing much easier, knowing the situation was in perfectly capable hands.

Between Robin's sweet tooth and child-like personality, Bruce expected Halloween night itself to be a big hit, but it went over with very little fanfare. According to Robin, he got to wear a mask every night, Alfred gave him sweets more or less whenever he wanted, and beating up bad guys pretty much counted as the "playing tricks" part of Trick or Treat anyway, so really the candy was just a bonus.

Bruce was inwardly relieved. He had dim memories of dressing up perhaps once or twice as a child, when his parents were still alive, but he thought those had been masquerade parties or even charity galas rather than more typical childhood trick-or-treating trips, and Alfred had certainly never taken him afterward—not that he'd ever had any real desire to go, anyway. He wasn't sure what the protocol even was, anymore, and it hadn't occurred to him to prepare a costume, unless their patrol suits counted. The idea that Robin hadn't expected anything from him was a relief, even though at the same time it was oddly disappointing. Maybe it was just the thought that Robin would only ever get one chance at a Halloween, and Bruce wanted to make it count, even if Robin did keep reminding him that he wasn't actually a child, no matter what he looked like or how he acted most of the time.

So instead of costumes and candy, they stayed in that evening. They watched old movies that, if Robin had actually been the nine-year-old he was supposed to be, he probably shouldn't have been watching at all. Bruce did his best to explain why some things were scary, and why some things that used to be scary were more likely to be funny nowadays, and why some things that looked like they should be scary had always been funny in the first place. There were blankets and popcorn with butter—Alfred relaxed his normally-strict dietary rules, just for one night, on account of "silly American traditions, Master Bruce; don't look at me, I didn't invent them"—and even store-bought chocolates, although Alfred grimaced when he was bullied into trying one instead of his homemade truffles.

The Manor was too secluded, too expensive, and too well-known to get any trick-or-treaters, so they went undisturbed. Alfred flitted in and out throughout the evening, making commentary on film angles and character design and makeup effects without ever really sitting down and joining them, passing the time until it got late enough that all the kids would be back indoors and the more dangerous crowds would be coming out to play.

That was their cue. They suited up and hit the streets, and if Robin's giggle was just a little more eerie, and Bruce stepped out of the shadows just a little more emphatically, well—the classics were classics for a reason. They worked, even when you had seen them a thousand times, even when you knew they were coming.

Still, there was no sign of the Joker.

Then, the first week in November, half a dozen overdose cases turned up in Leslie's clinic. After she ran her preliminary analysis and reported it to the police like she was legally obligated to do, she called the secure phone line Bruce had given her. As soon as she said his name, Bruce knew what she had found.

There was Venom on the streets of Gotham again. Bane had come back to town.

/~*~/

"He was waiting for this," Bruce said, punctuating his words with punches to the large bag, huffing out harsh breaths between phrases. "With the dirty cops the drug trade was too unstable a power structure, so he found a way to throw a wrench into the works, hoping it would sort itself out, given enough time."

The heavy bag swayed, forcing Robin to take a little skipping step to the side to bring it back under control. "The Arkham breakout?" he guessed.

"Crime Night in general," Bruce said. "But yes. The Kryptonite crystals for Lex to fund everything, then stir the pot and see what floats to the top. He couldn't move against the dirty cops himself; he needed a good cop to do it."

"And he figured we knew one," Robin said. He leaned into the bag, grunting slightly as a particularly vicious punch nearly knocked him off his feet. "But why not just point us to one of the murders or money laundering schemes himself? He had to know you'd put the rest of it together, once you had one piece."

Bruce didn't answer, just stepped back far enough to switch from boxing to something less formalized, something he might actually use in the field, something with kicking in it. He felt the need to kick something, suddenly.

"Because," Alfred said quietly from the side of the mat, where he was patiently holding a towel and a water bottle, "if Bane had shown up and asked Master Bruce to investigate a crime, what do you think would have happened?"

"Oh," Robin said.

"We helped him," Bruce said, with a snarl on his lips. Sweat trickled down between his eyebrows, stinging his eyes, but he didn't blink. "We _helped_ him. He was out of Gotham, because it was too risky to move his product here, and we went and paved the goddamn roads for him."

" _Language_ , Master Bruce," Alfred snapped.

"We put a lot of bad cops in jail, and some lawyers and judges," Robin said, much more quietly. He narrowed his eyes slightly in concentration, and the punching bag stopped moving entirely, except where it deformed internally. Robin might as well have been a statue; no matter how hard Bruce hit, his blows couldn't budge Robin's tiny form. "Also, I think we made Captain Jim's career." He cocked his head, the way he never did anymore unless he was trying to elicit a response, a caricature of the inhuman, inquisitive creature he simply wasn't anymore. "What's an election year?"

But Bruce wasn't really listening. He'd already promised both of them that there would be no repeat of his three-day mania from last time, but that didn't stop the way that the name kept circling around inside his head, a noose tightening down until it choked out all other thoughts: _Bane, Bane, Bane_. That deep laughter rang in his ears every time he closed his eyes. Phantom pain in his spine kept him awake at night, cold fingers creeping up the metal rods that were still inserted around his vertebrae where they were no longer needed. An unwanted reminder, in a body that didn't deal well with things outside its own control on the best of days.

"Come _on_ , Bruce, watch what you're doing!"

Bruce blinked, coming back into reality like breaking the surface of a calm lake from underwater. He was breathing hard, sweat-sticky, his t-shirt soaked through and plastered to his back and chest. At least he was still standing this time, but the punching bag wasn't so lucky. Unable to diffuse momentum by swinging freely, with Robin holding it still, the force of Bruce's enhanced blows had busted the bag at the seams, leaving it limp and ragged as it hung from a warped chain. Bruce's skin was coated in fine sand, which was clinging enthusiastically to the dampness of his hands and arms. Robin was even worse off, covered from head to foot and scowling, his black hair appearing almost dirty-blond from the grains stuck in it.

Robin side-stepped out of the mess. "Feel better now?" he asked, rolling his eyes once. His image rippled, which made all the sand drop immediately off him and into a neat pile on the mat, leaving him as pristine as if he'd taken a twenty-minute shower in the intervening millisecond.

Alfred stepped forward, offering Bruce the towel and water bottle without even looking at him, and then turned to Robin. "I don't suppose you could have managed that _inside_ the waste basket, young sir?"

Robin shrugged with a toothy grin. "Now, where's the fun in that?"

Alfred sighed. "At least fetch me the broom," he said, gesturing to the corner where the cleaning supplies were kept, which wasn't far from where Robin was standing.

Bruce carefully shook the sand from his taped hands, ignoring the way the rough particles clung to the sweat and the glue from the tape. He wanted to push his damp hair back from his eyes, but he didn't dare; he'd just end up with grit on his face and scratches under his eyelids, doing more damage than good.

Robin danced over to the cleaning corner with his typical light-footed run, presumably more for the excuse to burn off excess energy than out of any real desire to help Alfred. Once there, he plucked the largest area broom from the rack, a good foot and a half taller than he was, and began pushing it back in their direction. About halfway there, he broke into a run and used the broad, rectangular brush of the broom as a sort of pole arm to vault back toward the training mats with a little battle-cry of the sort that Bruce categorically forbid in the field, because of the tactical disadvantages of revealing your location prematurely.

Robin was lightweight enough, and the broom was large and stable enough, that he got a good five or six feet in the air at the top of his arc before gravity won and began to pull him down. He landed with a well-executed combat roll at the edge of the mat, twisting over the shaft of the broom like a staff weapon so that he could both keep his grip on it and not dislocate his shoulder, as Bruce had taught him. He was back on his feet again a moment later, with a little bounce and a flourish, like a gymnast at the end of a routine.

Alfred politely clapped, the perfect image of a well-mannered golf spectator.

"If you two are done?" Bruce demanded, savagely removing the tape from his hands in long, thick strips. "We have work to do."

Alfred's mouth made a thin, white line. Robin just watched Bruce for a moment, silently leaning the broom out in Alfred's direction, not dropping his eyes the way he would have even six or eight weeks earlier.

Bruce felt the urge to shake them, one after the other. He wanted to get up in their faces and ask, _How can you know that Bane is in the city and treat it so lightly? How can you smile and joke and act domestic, like everything is normal when it_ _'s not, when it's so very, very wrong? When we're the ones who made it that way?_

Instead he turned away from them, feeling sick to his stomach. Had it really been just a few days ago that he had sat on the couch picking apart old black-and-white movies on Halloween with Robin, teaching him about jump scares and psychological thrillers? Had it really been just a few weeks since he'd come back from the hardest conversation of his life in a burned-out library and wondered if he'd ever raise his voice in this house again?

"I'm taking a shower," he said, curt, and fled, leaving a mess behind him for Alfred to clean up, like always.

/~*~/

Because Gotham thrived on criminal activity, corruption, tragedy, and irony in roughly equal measure, the Joker was caught that same night—but not by Bruce and Robin. Apparently, he walked up to the Arkham front gate and surrendered, partially because he was bored—Bruce hadn't played his game the way he'd expected, and Robin hadn't even done him the favor of dying like he was supposed to—and partially because he "missed his psychiatrist."

(If it was the same one who had apparently gotten Ivy to recant her kill-all-the-humans-to-save-the-plants tendencies and willingly accept therapy, however briefly it had lasted, Bruce was beginning to think he needed to meet this Dr. Quinzel.)

By the time the news was spreading through the criminal underworld, Bruce and Robin were already on Gordon's roof, and he was already shaking his head at them.

"What do you want me to do?" he was asking, already fumbling for his lighter as the ember of his first cigarette was dimming between his lips. It seemed like the daily attempts on his life from dirty cops, judges on the take, and crooked lawyers with millions to lose had erased all progress in his never-ending battle to quit smoking. "Arkham is a private institution. I don't have any pull there."

Robin actually snorted, which made Gordon shoot him a dark look, although it did have the benefit of making his dad-instincts kick in. He automatically turned so that the prevailing wind carried the second-hand smoke away from the presumably-growing lungs in the vicinity.

"I hear they're going to give you a medal or something," Robin said, in his excited-little-boy tone. "You're a real hero, Captain Jim! I bet you could ask for all sorts of stuff. We just need to ask him a few questions. It'll only take, like, five minutes!"

Gordon gave Bruce the side-eye this time, clearly wondering if the "we" meant that Bruce was planning to sneak a preteen inside a maximum-security psychiatric facility to interrogate the homicidal maniac who had nearly killed him the month before.

That conversation, the one that had taken place after Gordon had interviewed the news studio survivors, had been unpleasant, to say the least. There had been a serious question as to whether the Joker's attempt on Robin's life counted as breaking Bruce's promise to Gordon to "keep him safe." If it hadn't been for Robin's healing powers convincing Gordon that the witnesses had been grossly exaggerating the extent of his injuries, Bruce would have ended up a fugitive in reality, instead of in-name-only—if Gordon hadn't shot him on the spot, that was. He had been _that_ angry, at the time.

For now, though, Gordon let it pass without a remark. "Five minutes or five seconds," he said, snuffing out his first cigarette and lighting the second. "I'm not sure I can get you in unnoticed, let alone back out again."

"I'll settle for in and out, period," Bruce admitted. "Unnoticed is a bonus, not a requirement."

Robin looked at him like he'd grown a second head, but didn't argue the point.

Gordon sighed, blowing smoke away from them and into the chilly November wind. "Fine. I'll make a phone call. But you'll owe me one."

Bruce crossed his arms. "Eighty percent of the names that were on the ballot two weeks ago are now under investigation." He made a guess, but an educated one, considering that they were only a few days out from the elections and the local news had been speculating wildly since the investigation upset the proverbial applecart of city politics. "Are you sure I'm the one with the debt, _Commissioner_ Gordon?"

Gordon somehow managed to go pale _and_ red, all at the same time. "That's just a rumor, because Loeb is under investigation," he snapped. "It'll only happen if there's enough write-in votes on the ballot, and you know that never actually works."

"Hero," Robin chimed in, right on time. "Medal. Remember?"

"You're welcome," Bruce added dryly. "Get me into Arkham tonight and we're even. Ready, Robin?"

"Yeah, coming," Robin said brightly, and they headed for the edge of the roof.

"Oh, for—look, at least give me an hour!" Gordon called after them. "Arkham's back gate, at midnight!"

/~*~/

For all the fuss Gordon had made at the prospect, getting in and out of Arkham wasn't an issue. One of the nurses on staff had been an EMT before switching careers, and still had some connections in law enforcement; via one of those six-degrees-of-freedom rules one of Gordon's people knew somebody who knew somebody else who remembered that Rhondell-the-former EMT was on duty tonight at Arkham, and that was that. They had their way in.

Arkham was a foreboding place on the best of days. It was every horrible cliché of a turn-of-the-century insane asylum come to life, the epicenter of Gotham's obsession with Gothic architecture, shadowy corners, moss-covered stone, and brick courtyards. The wrought-iron gates loomed up out of the night like something from an old black-and-white film, lacking only the dramatic flash of lightning and a crack of thunder to complete the image, maybe the subtle rising tremble of high-pitched violins to increase the tension.

Robin nudged his elbow as they parked the car a safe distance away in a spot it wouldn't be seen, and began to sneak up to the back gate. "Was James Whale from Gotham?" he whispered.

Bruce shook his head. "No."

"How about Hitchcock?"

"No. But a lot of people think he visited, at least once."

Rhondell was surprisingly unimpressed by seeing the Bat up close and in person, actually offering a hand for Bruce to shake like he was any other person on the street, which not even Gordon had ever done. Bemused despite himself, Bruce took it. Robin smiled to himself when Rhondell didn't hesitate to offer him a hand as well, and then usher them inside the building without a word, as if he let masked vigilantes illegally enter his maximum-security workplace every day.

"Thank you," Robin said in a whisper, once they were through the security door, which they had gotten past using Rhondell's badge, in conjunction with Robin's invisibility glamour. Although Rhondell, presumably, hadn't been aware of that bit, since he had made them wait at the corner until the security camera had finished an arc in the other direction.

"Far as I'm concerned," Rhondell said, just as softly, "you two ought to be on the payroll, given how regularly you fill out the guest list." He glanced around the edge of the hallway, checking to be sure no one would spot them as they headed for the secure wing, and then gestured. "Come on."

It took another twenty minutes of careful sneaking—more careful than necessary, considering that at this pace, Robin's invisibility glamour was capable of covering both Bruce and himself, as long as he wasn't startled—but Rhondell got them to the secure holding room where he had already placed the Joker beforehand, without incident.

It was a small room, as claustrophobic as the rest of Arkham's narrow corridors and twisting walkways, with cold stone that had been laid a hundred years earlier and then retro-fitted with state-of-the-art security systems in the modern style of shatter-proof glass and plastic. The Joker sat at a small table, dressed in inmate orange that clashed horribly with his acid-wash white skin and dyed-green hair, which was no longer slicked back but falling haphazardly around his face. Somehow it made him look more fragile, and less human, all at the same time.

There was one-way glass just outside the door, so for the moment the Joker couldn't see them, but some preternatural instinct must have alerted him anyway, because he perked up the second Bruce and Robin approached. He drew his hands together, handcuffs and chains clinking on the table, and crossed his legs at the ankle underneath his chair, partially hiding the plain white slippers underneath the elastic cuffs of his jumpsuit. Even like this, disarmed, defanged, he looked dangerous. There was something about the glint in his eye, the set of his shoulders—something that whispered in the prehistoric part of the brain, saying: this is a predator, something that will hurt and rend and tear and kill, because that's what it has been designed to do.

At Bruce's side, Robin stopped cold, and at the verge of his enhanced hearing Bruce could make out the faintest hint of an inhuman growl, a guard dog with its hackles raised.

"Robin?" Bruce asked, as quietly as he could manage, hoping Rhondell couldn't hear.

"I'm fine," Robin said, but it came out a hiss. In that moment, he seemed more creature than child, the way he had been the day he'd woken up after the Joker's attack.

" _Robin_ ," Bruce repeated, and it wasn't quite a Command, just a reminder, a wisp of power in his voice to snap the boy back to the present and out of whatever memory had a hold of him—although it didn't take the World's Greatest Detective to guess which one. "Can you do this, or do you want to stay out here?"

Robin shook himself, still a guard dog but now one emerging from a lake and ridding itself of unwanted water droplets. His glamour rippled, briefly enough that Bruce hoped Rhondell hadn't noticed, and when it settled his armor was ever-so-slightly thicker, his domino mask ever-so-slightly larger around his eyes, his collar ever-so-slightly higher around his throat. _Like a child_ , Bruce thought, and despite the subject matter the tone was fond anyway, _pulling the blankets up to his chin against the nightmare_.

For a moment he almost ordered Robin to stay behind, but he knew the boy wouldn't listen, not unless he forced the issue. He wasn't willing to do that, not yet, not when Robin was much more likely to be an asset than a liability, in this specific situation. _I need to find Bane_ , a voice whispered in the back of Bruce's head, something cold and ruthless and Batman-logical, _and the Joker does so love to see the results of his work_.

Bruce was a good enough man to feel guilty as soon as the thought occurred to him, but not enough of one to change his mind in the aftermath. Robin's visible fear was an advantage, and Bruce simply wasn't the kind of man to leave one of those on the table, no matter how it was earned—or what it might cost, in the long run. They didn't have a long run to worry about, anyway.

"Let's go, then," he said, and gestured for Rhondell to open the door.

Rhondell did so, and then backed out of the way, heading a few paces away to watch the hall and keep an eye out for approaching orderlies.

No matter how often it happened, seeing the Joker up close never failed to unsettle Bruce. There was something about him that made all the little hairs on Bruce's arms and the back of his neck stand at attention underneath the armor, not to mention the way his stomach seemed too light and too heavy all at the same time. There was always an aura in the atmosphere around the Joker, something oily and almost visible that plucked at Bruce's nerves in a way that no other villain—not even Bane in his worst moments—ever caused.

"I knew it!" the Joker said, sitting bolt upright, his always-grinning face somehow smiling even wider as Bruce and Robin entered. "Coming here was _such_ a good idea, one of my best in ages. I knew you just couldn't resist coming to visit if you knew where I was."

The Joker's head turned, his eyes narrowed, and one of his quick-changes came over him, from delighted maniac to eerily sane and smart in one cold, hard instant. "And you brought the little birdie back to see me," he added, thoughtful. "How kind of you. How's he feeling?"

Bruce shifted without realizing he was going to do it, putting his bulk between the Joker's line of sight and Robin's small, colorful form. For once, Robin didn't immediately balk or protest, but instead stayed very subdued behind him. "I'm not here to talk about Robin," he said.

"Hmmm," the Joker said. "Well, why are you here, then?"

"I want to talk about Bane," Bruce said. He kept the name from coming out like a curse, but only just. "Do you know where he is?"

"Bane?" the Joker asked, in the tone of a scandalized socialite. He made a scoffing noise. "He's even less fun than you are, Batsy. He plans everything out to the tiniest little details. It's infuriating."

Bruce felt his temples begin to throb. "So do you," he pointed out flatly.

"Well, yes," the Joker admitted. "I make plans. But then I don't _follow_ them. Bane always does, right down to the letter! Now, where's the fun in that?"

Robin twitched, violently. Bruce couldn't see him, but he could feel the air moving from the disturbance it caused, the way it tugged at his cape like Robin wanted to duck underneath it to hide. He suddenly remembered Alfred and a broom and a little pile of sand. _I don_ _'t suppose you could have managed that_ ** _inside_** _the waste basket, young sir?_

Bruce didn't say anything, but he reached behind him and put a hand on Robin's shoulder, steadying him. He didn't have time to deal with another iteration of Robin's identity crisis, right now; he'd save the reassurances for later, when they were back in the car and he had time to list all the ways in which Robin and the Joker were different, and why those were more important than the ways in which they appeared to be the same.

"I need to know where to find him," Bruce said, with his best There Will Be Consequences voice. "I know you were in contact. Tell me where he is."

The Joker blew a raspberry at him. "Aren't you quite the pair, honestly," he said, and rolled his eyes. "All I heard was 'I broke the Bat,' over and over from him, and now all I hear from you is 'Bane this,' and 'Bane that.'"

With a suddenness that very nearly made Bruce jump despite his training, the Joker slammed his handcuffed hands on the table, drawing blood from where the metal cut into his wrists. The bang of the impact echoed through the tiny room. Somewhere behind Bruce, Robin went deathly still. Rhondell poked his head in from the hallway, just to be sure a fight hadn't broken out. When he saw that Bruce was still a good three feet from the table and obviously hadn't been the cause of the blood on his patient, he shrugged and walked back out without a word.

"I don't want to talk about _Bane_!" the Joker whined, ignoring the pain in his hands, if he even felt any at all. "You came here to see me, didn't you?"

"Only because you have information that I need," Bruce said.

"No, you came for me," the Joker insisted. "To see me. Me, me, _me_!"

From behind him, Robin nudged Bruce's hip in the signal for _retreat to safe distance_ , and then followed it with the triple-tap microphone click that meant _I_ _'m in trouble but I can't talk because someone is listening_. Bruce didn't hesitate; he swept out of the room without a backward glance, leaving the Joker calling after him in dismay.

Once in the hallway outside, with the one-way glass safely in between the Joker and Robin, Bruce crouched down to look him in the eye and asked, "What's wrong?"

Off to the side, Rhondell glanced at them, momentarily curious, before resuming his watch down the corridor.

"You're not getting anywhere," Robin said, very quietly. "Let me try."

Bruce hesitated. "I don't think—"

"You can't scare him," Robin said, his voice still soft. "He isn't afraid of you."

Bruce couldn't argue with that. None of his regular tactics had ever worked on the Joker; it was one of the things that made him so dangerous. Still, letting Robin take the lead—not with a victim or a bystander or a henchman, but with one of Gotham's deadliest villains—it scared him, in a way he wasn't ready to examine, at the moment.

"I won't," Robin said, even more quietly than before. "You can trust me with him. I promised, didn't I? Before I even knew what the words meant."

Bruce blinked behind his white lenses, only then seeing the hurt in Robin's face for what it was. Robin had seen Bruce's hesitation, but he had misunderstood the reason. Robin thought Bruce was reluctant to put Robin in the same room with the psychopath who had hurt him because Bruce was afraid that Robin would retaliate, that he would ignore all the lessons Bruce had taught him about morals and empathy and justice, and settle for revenge instead.

Bruce reached out, settling his gloved hand on the back of Robin's neck. "It's not the Joker I'm trying to protect," he said.

The relief in Robin's smile was almost stronger than the fear.

"You'll let me go in?" he asked, perking up slightly. "Alone?"

"You think that's the best move?"

Robin stood even straighter and lifted his chin. "I think it's the only play we've got, B," he said.

 _We_ , Bruce thought. It had been a long time since that word had really meant anything to him, beyond a simple pronoun meaning a group of two or more people he happened to be in at the moment. Perhaps that wasn't fair to Alfred, who had been with him every step of the way, but for all Alfred's support over the long years, it had always been exactly that—support. Alfred had been calling him "Master Bruce" since he was six years old, and though he might chastise or offer advice or even occasionally remind Bruce that he'd changed his diapers once upon a time, there was a gulf there that simply couldn't be crossed, no matter how much either of them might want things to be different sometimes. Alfred would die for Bruce in a heartbeat, and in every way that counted he had raised him, but at the end of the day he was still an employee.

 _We_ , Bruce thought. It had a nice ring to it. It wouldn't last—in just a few months they would both be gone, and that thought kept ambushing him at the most inopportune moments—but for now, he liked the way it sounded. _We_.

"Go on, then," Bruce said, and stepped back.

Of course, trusting Robin didn't make watching him walk into a small room alone with the Joker any easier. Once Robin closed the door, sealing himself behind the one-way glass, the uneasy feeling in Bruce's stomach intensified. When Robin jumped lightly up to sit perched on the edge of the table at which the Joker was chained, attempting to appear unconcerned about the mass-murdering psychopath now within arm's reach, but obviously terrified under the surface, Bruce's heart jumped up into his throat and stayed there.

"Ballsy kid," Rhondell muttered from his spot a few feet down the hall. He was in no way pretending to keep watch any longer.

Bruce didn't know what else to do, so he just nodded and kept his eyes on the Joker's hands. At the first sign that something was going wrong, he would be through that doorway, reinforced safety glass be damned.

"Oh, _what_ , are we sending in the Pee-Wee squad now?" the Joker complained, flopping back in his chair as far as his chains would allow. Over the speaker system that carried the room's audio to the observation nook in the hallway, his overdone, grating voice was even harsher on Bruce's enhanced ears than it was in person. "Where did Bats go?"

Robin shrugged, kicking his feet as if he didn't have a care in the world. They moved a little too quickly to be convincing, though, and his words, when they came, were sharp and clipped instead of casual. "I don't know," he said, leaning back on both arms. "Ran off to find Bane, probably."

"Humph," the Joker snorted. It looked for a moment like he wanted to cross his arms, before he remembered that they were chained up and he couldn't. "That's just rude."

Robin shrugged again, then leaned forward a bit. "What's so special about this Bane guy anyway? He wouldn't tell me."

"Nothing," the Joker said instantly. "Drug lord, like those aren't a dime a dozen. You know, he isn't even _from_ Gotham?"

Robin clicked his tongue in disapproval, as if this were a serious crime. "You'd think that would count for something, wouldn't you?" He shook his head, slowing his kicking until his feet stilled, hanging forlornly off the edge of the table. In that moment, he was the perfect image of every kid picked last for a team at recess, or the last child left behind at after-school-care by a forgetful parent working long hours: resigned, subdued, no longer even upset because it was expected. "Every time Bane comes to town, this happens. It's like, everything else just stops mattering at all."

Bruce absolutely did not flinch, and even if he did the armor should have hidden it, but somehow he noticed Rhondell giving him a look anyway.

"He _did_ used to be more fun, didn't he?" the Joker said, sounding wistful.

Robin leaned in toward the Joker, swallowing once. "Can I tell you a secret?" he asked, in his little-boy voice.

"Ooh, I just _love_ secrets," the Joker said.

Robin licked his lips, but otherwise gave no sign that he was nervous or scared. "You used to be his favorite," he said quietly, which made Bruce's skin crawl beneath the armor. "Then Bane got in the way."

The Joker scowled, looking briefly like someone who has swallowed sour milk.

Robin leaned away again. Now, finally, the terror was completely hidden—and just in time for him to plant the hook. "It's a shame, really," he continued, shrugging his arms. "That you don't know where Bane is, I mean. If you could tell me, and we could get him off the streets, well, then there wouldn't be anybody left to take his time and attention away from _you_."

The Joker looked suddenly thoughtful.

Robin hopped lightly off the table. "But, I guess if you really don't know anything …"

"Wait," the Joker said.

In the hallway outside, Bruce smiled. "Nicely done," he said, knowing Robin could hear him even through the safety glass.

/~*~/

The Joker didn't know where Bane's operation in Gotham was headquartered, or where his distribution routes ran, or how to track his shipments at the docks, or anything else that Bruce might have ordinarily considered actionable intelligence in an investigation. What the Joker did know was how to get a message to him—a coded system passed through the guards that Bane had worked out the last time the Joker had been in Arkham, to coordinate the breakout. With any luck, it would still work, with Bane back in town.

"I really hate the smart ones," Bruce had muttered, not for the first time.

"Even when it works out in your favor, sir?" Alfred had asked, with his single raised eyebrow.

"It makes them harder to trap," Robin said sagely, and not at all as though he was repeating something he had heard Bruce say a few minutes earlier in the car.

It had taken some time to work out the best message to send, how to word it and when to pass it along so that Bane ended up exactly where they wanted him. In the end, it was three days of prep work and another trip to Arkham to make sure the Joker had the message memorized and was willing to play ball—and for that, Bruce had to go back in the room and give the psychopath his full attention for the better part of ten minutes, which made him want to go home and take a radiation-scrubbing shower afterward—but they made their move.

 _The Batman_ _'s been sniffing around. Came to see me to ask about your merchandise. He thinks your headquarters are somewhere on the Griffith block down Bayside, and he's closing in. If you're there, you've got twenty-four hours to move. If you're not, happy Bat-hunting!_

"Do you think he'll show?" Robin asked, as they were getting ready to go out—or rather, as Bruce was methodically donning the armor and checking his equipment, and Robin was waiting as patiently as he was able after flickering instantly into his patrol suit.

"He'll consider that it might be a trap," Bruce said, checking the clasps on his gauntlets, and then holding out his hands to let Alfred repeat the process, much more gently and more efficiently. "But he'll come. He's been telling the world that he killed me—or at least put me out of commission—for nearly a year now." When Alfred released him, he turned for the weapons cabinet and his utility belt. "He'll want to look me in the eye. He'll want to know if I'm the same man."

"Are you?" Alfred asked, very quietly.

Bruce pretended that he hadn't heard the question. Instead, he snapped the utility belt on and swung the cape around his shoulders. "Are you ready?" he asked Robin.

Robin sighed. "Which of us has to actually get dressed, and which of us has a glamour?"

/~*~/

One of the first lessons that Bruce had to teach Robin about crime-fighting—and, indeed, one of the first lessons he'd had to learn himself, when he'd started, nearly three years ago now—was that while the "fighting" part tended to be what you remembered later, or what seemed to take up the most time in the moment, it was in reality the least time-consuming part of the process. Research, investigation, interrogations, stakeouts, reading through case files, or even just sitting and thinking and putting the facts together into a coherent whole, all tended to take up more of their time on any given patrol night than actually flying around on zip lines and punching bad guys. All of that didn't even include the many hours in the Cave's training room or the Manor's study doing lessons, which made up by far a greater portion of their days than all the other more active duties combined.

Bruce didn't like to compare what they were doing to a sport, but any athlete would have recognized the ratio of practice to actual "in-game" time; they might train for three hours, do a three-hour patrol, and end up in a dozen fights that took maybe ten minutes, cumulative, and that was being generous. It wasn't, strictly speaking, _combat_ either—not in the classic sense, anyway—but the old soldier's adage about battle being ninety-nine percent boredom and one percent terror was pretty spot on, too, with the slight addendum that Bruce and Robin were both a bit better-trained in dealing with both sides of that particular coin than the average human member of a modern armed forces group.

Although Bruce tended to handle boredom, at least, better than Robin did.

"So is he coming, or not?" Robin demanded.

At the moment, he was dangling upside down by his knees from a rafter beam of the little closed-down church they were using as their vantage point, his arms crossed and his cape falling down to frame him in bright yellow against the half-broken stained-glass window behind him. Faith didn't survive long in Gotham, except of course in the places where it did, against all odds; this church had been closed as long as Bruce could remember, and yet there were candles on the altar, freshly melted, the wax still warm to the touch, the lingering scent of incense on the air. Bruce couldn't decide if that was hopeful or sad, the idea that someone, or several someones, still came here and lit candles for their God or their loved ones, or just because it was something to do against the dark of the night, so many years after their city had given up on this place.

"He'll be here," Bruce said. He was perched on the sill of a window that no longer had any glass at all, imitating one of the gargoyles that sat at the corners of the building.

As if to make up for its absence last week at Arkham, lightning chose that moment to break open the night sky in a brilliant crack, briefly back-lighting the remaining windows and bathing the sanctuary in rose and gold and pale green. Anything remotely valuable had long since been liberated from within the church's walls, but there was threadbare red velvet remaining on the pew benches and a few mother-of-pearl inlay tracings high on the walls where enterprising adventurers couldn't quite reach. The chandeliers had always been glass rather than crystal, never touched saved where time had cracked them or storms had shaken them loose. They shone, albeit dully, in the refracted light.

"This place was beautiful, once," Robin said, with a wistful tone to his voice. "What happened to it?"

Bruce didn't answer him.

Within half an hour, the storm had arrived in force, unusual for so late in the year. November wasn't a time for thunderstorms, but this one swept in off the Bay like someone had summoned it. The west wind came in off the water cold and fierce, with hard rain in sheets like stinging whips. Bruce curled his cape around himself on the windowsill less for protection—the armor was enough for that—and more so that the wind and water wouldn't catch the fabric like a sail and toss him into the air.

Robin had elected to remain inside the church on the ceiling rafter beam, although that by itself wasn't keeping him any drier. His glamour was going that; he'd adjusted it so that the water wasn't sticking to him.

"Are you _sure_ he's coming?" Robin asked, when the storm had been raging about twenty minutes, and the rain was turning to a steady, even downpour.

"He'll be here," Bruce repeated, in a growl this time, never taking his eyes off the street below. Everything shone under the faint luminescence from the sparse street-lights, reflecting off the layer of running water on the ground, but Bruce wasn't paying attention to the scenery. He was scanning for the arrival of a suspicious car or van carrying Bane's top lieutenants or a search party.

In the worst-case scenario, that's all he would get. He was prepared for that outcome, but he didn't expect it; Bane would come himself. He would need to, to save face if nothing else, but better than that, he would want to. Bruce had beaten him, had beaten the odds just by surviving, and Bane would want to know how. He wouldn't come alone—he wasn't that stupid, and Bruce wasn't that lucky—but he wouldn't send his minions to get answers on their own, either.

He would be here.

And then, as suddenly as the lightning strike that had heralded the storm, he was.

/~*~/

The first time that Bruce had seen Bane face-to-face, almost a year ago now, his first impression had been of some great hulking monster, Frankenstein's creation stepped out of the laboratory and into real life, complete with plugs and wires coming out of his brain and into a contraption on his back to feed his massive muscles. Of course, Bane was more the scientist than the creature, although never formally educated, but that didn't diminish the sheer physical presence of him, shorter than Bruce by three or four inches but nearly half again as broad in the shoulder and twice as heavy, every ounce of it muscle. He had the physique of a professional body-builder in his prime, the kind only obtained through years of high-powered steroids—in his case, the very same Venom he sold on street corners and tailored for celebrities and athletes—and it made him slow, although not as slow as he first appeared.

Bruce had almost fallen for it, the first time. The huge body, the slow movement, the thick words—Bane was self-taught in English, raised in an island prison, and spoke with an accent that was sometimes difficult to parse—and it made it easy to underestimate him, to judge him based on his appearance or stereotype him as the big, dumb brute. Bruce had been overconfident, and it had nearly gotten him killed. It had almost cost him everything.

There would be no such mistakes, this time.

"Robin," Bruce said, keeping his voice just under the register of normal human hearing. "Whatever henchmen he brought with him, handle them."

"I count three by the first car, two more on foot by the sidewalk, with another two cars pulling up behind—that makes thirteen, probably—and the van he got out of might have a couple more inside with the driver, so—"

Bruce didn't care; his attention was on Bane, walking slowly up from the van to the old Griffith theater entrance. "I said handle them," he repeated. "And leave Bane to me."

"That's an awful lot of bad guys all by my— _Batman_!"

The last word came out as a hiss, but Bruce was already gone. He glided down from the empty church window amidst the rain and cold wind, flaring out his cape at the last minute to land, as near to silently as he could in the heavy armor and boots. He came down on the sidewalk not five feet behind Bane, in between him and the closest of his men.

In the space of a heartbeat, he had more than fifteen automatic weapons pointed at him, from a myriad of different angles.

"I believe we had an appointment," Bruce said, in his worst Batman-growl. It was an effort to hold himself still, so that his hands weren't shaking, but it wasn't fear—or at least, it mostly wasn't fear. He'd been waiting for this moment for what felt like years.

Bane turned, in that deceptive, slow-that-wasn't-as-slow-as-it-looked way of his. The sickly-green glow of the Venom tank on his back, with its thick tubes that plunged directly into the back of his skull, gave way first to the bulging bare muscle of his arm and shoulder, then to the wide, flat expanse of his chest and masked face. He had made very little concession to the cold weather or the storm, dressed almost identically to the way Bruce remembered in his dreams: jeans, heavy boots, tight muscle-style tank top, in shades of black and silver and dark red, with very little ornamentation unless you counted the Venom leads that jacked right into his brain. The mask over his face was the exact same as Bruce remembered, reminiscent of, but not quite, a Mexican wrestler's design.

"Yes," Bane said, the word thick with an island accent that Bruce had never been able to conclusively trace. The mask over his lips didn't help. "I believe we did."

That was when Robin landed, his small boots square on the nose of one of Bane's henchmen, and the street around them got very hectic very quickly. Several of the automatic weapons fired, in quick, staccato bursts that were shockingly loud in the close, damp air of the storm. Bruce's combat instincts had him ducking out of the line of fire, and Bane—being the smart one that he was—followed suit. For a strange, surreal moment they were crouching nearly side-by-side, silent spectators as Robin tore through Bane's men like a storm of locusts through a wheat field.

" _El Ni_ _ño Diablo_ ," Bane said, sounding much more at home in Spanish than he ever had in English. "The little demon, they call him?" He nodded at Bruce, with a small shrug of his massive shoulders. "You don't worry about this child, _su demonito_ , with my men? Those bullets are real, my friend."

Somewhere on the street, a man screamed as Robin dislocated his knee. The next moment, Robin was spinning away with a leap to land a flying kick to another minion's temple and send him boneless to the wet street in a heap. Then, grinning, he fired his grapple to a nearby light-post and used it to swing high enough in the air to pick a new target.

"He'll be fine," Bruce said, dismissive. "And if more than a dozen of your men can't handle one nine-year-old, they deserve to get arrested."

Bane considered this for a moment. "Fair," he said. He waved a hand, and the few remaining men who had kept their guns on Bruce turned their attention, somewhat uneasily, to the Devil Child who was now eerily giggling from somewhere unseen above them and off to the left.

"So," Bane continued, "you put yourself through a lot of trouble with the Joker to get me here. Tell me why."

 _Because you took everything away from me_ , Bruce thought, _and I lost everything else I didn_ _'t realize I still had trying to get it all back._

"You walked away from our last encounter before we were finished," Bruce said instead, grinding the words out from between clenched teeth. "I came here to end it."

Bane visibly scoffed at him. "This is foolishness. I know the sound of a man's spine breaking. You are not the same Bat. You can't be."

"I am," Bruce said.

"You are not."

"I am," Bruce said again, more forcefully. "Four surgeries, six metal rods and accompanying pins, three months of physical therapy, and it wasn't enough. So I got desperate, and I made a deal with a Little Demon without understanding the price. But here I stand."

Bane watched him for a long moment. "No," he said. "I do not believe this."

Bruce gestured with one hand. "Does he seem human, to you?"

Bane turned, wary, and saw that of his dozen-plus men, only three were still standing, and they were in a tight cluster with their backs to each other, visibly terrified with their guns pointed outward and upward. They were firing, erratic, clearly spooked and shooting at shadows rather than any real targets. Robin's eerie giggle was still ringing through the night, piercing the storm, but it never seemed to come from a consistent direction or give any indication of where he might be at that moment. Then, from out of the darkness, one of their custom stylized bat-shaped throwing stars zinged out and lodged itself smack in the center of one man's gun hand.

The man, startled and in pain, dropped the gun, and that was all the distraction Robin needed. He was on the group in an eye-blink, moving with the quick, brutal efficiency that Bruce had taught him, but also with the fluid, elegant grace and light-footed agility that had been his own trademark from his first steps in this world. He seemed almost to fly from one move to the next, bouncing or kicking from one perch to another and hardly noticing a difference between the ground, a person's face, or their weapon. In seconds, all three men were down and groaning, leaving Robin to land in the space they had occupied, yellow-and-black cape flaring behind him, white lenses wide in his green domino mask. Slowly, he grinned.

Bane took a single, measured step backward.

"Last year you left me broken in a gutter not far from here," Bruce said. He was no longer worried about his hands shaking; he couldn't have stopped them even if he wanted, but it was rage, now, not fear, that was controlling them. "I came because it's time to return the favor."

/~*~/

If pressed—and he was, eventually, by almost everyone he knew who ever found out the truth about that night—Bruce would never be able to satisfactorily explain what happened over the course of the next ten minutes. He remembered bits and pieces of it, snatches of memory like fragments of a dream, images and sounds and feelings, but never anything coherent enough to be called a sequence of events. Several people accused him of lying about what he did or didn't remember, calling it suspiciously convenient, although no one (save Jason, during some of their worst fights, in later years) had ever been brave enough to do it to his face.

He remembered starting the fight with Bane—a single swift punch to the upper gut—but that's the last moment that was clear in his mind. From Robin's report, and Alfred's account of what he overheard on the radio, and Clark's recollections (after his arrival approximately five minutes in), Bruce managed later to piece together a rough timeline. The official forensics report filled in some of the other details, things Robin hadn't been paying attention to, at first.

The fight had started out in the street. Robin's last standing order had been to leave Bane to Bruce, and so he had stayed back as instructed, checking the downed henchmen for dangerous concussions and zip-tying the ones who might wake up soon or cause more trouble before the cops could be called.

According to Robin's mission log, by the time he'd finished with that task, Bruce and Bane had moved their fight off the streets and into the little church building where they had hidden for a couple hours earlier that evening. They hadn't entered through the door, but apparently by crashing straight through a section of wooden support beams. Robin hadn't witnessed that part, but analysis after the fact revealed that Bane had hit the wall first, with Bruce following; it had broken seven of Bane's ribs and had only done so little damage as that because the beams were old, damp from the storm, and weakened from rot and termites.

Bruce wasn't sure if he could remember throwing Bane through the church wall, or if he could just picture it so clearly that it felt like he could remember it—to pick up that huge body and hurl it through the air, hear the crunch of bone and sinew as it struck unyielding wood and punched its way past, the fibers of the wood ripping and tearing and popping just as the bones of Bane's ribcage were snapping like dry twigs under the pressure, then to walk inside the cool, serene dark of the peaceful little church to the steady dripping of the storm-water and Bane's blood on the red velvet—

It didn't feel like a memory. It felt like a dream, fluid and mutable and impressionistic.

By the time Robin entered the church, according to his mission report, approximately two minutes had passed since the fight began. By then, Bane had already lost, emphatically, if he'd ever had a chance at all. The phrase used in Robin's log of the event had been "bloody pulp;" the more technical, somewhat-more-graphic wording of the official police report had been "excessive cranial, sternum, and abdominal contusions." Bruce had never even removed the Venom jacks from Bane's skull, either because he didn't need to de-power Bane to win the fight, or because he wanted Bane have his drug in his system, so that he would feel every second of the fight at the heightened awareness the steroid gave him, so that he could heal just that tiny bit faster, stay alert just one minute longer.

Bruce had his suspicions, but once again, he simply wasn't sure. He'd never been sadistic before, but his own mind had never betrayed him this way before, either.

That image, too, was burned into Bruce's mind, dancing on the line between memory and dream: Bane, broken and bleeding at his feet before the church altar. Sometimes, Bruce looked down and saw that Bane was laughing at him, spitting blood on the carpet and cursing at him. Sometimes, Bruce looked down and saw that Bane was crying, the tears silver against the black and red of his torn and bloody mask. Bruce had no way to know which of the two might be true, if either of them were, or neither, or both.

Robin never spoke of it to him, not directly, and Bruce wouldn't ask him. Sometimes, he told himself he was trying to avoid dredging up painful memories that Robin would do better to avoid. Sometimes, he called himself a coward who didn't want to hear the truth, and believed it with all his heart.

What happened next was fairly well-documented, because so much of it was spoken in words. Bruce listened to the audio from the Cave's radio recordings himself, and if he couldn't quite remember the sequence except as a hazy blur of color and motion, then he could imagine it well enough, visualize the motion of bodies from the sounds in the air.

Not remembering it scared him, but in the end Bruce was grateful.

Imagining it was bad enough.

/~*~/

"Batman, what are you … Hey!"

Robin never made any noise when he moved, not even sprinting in combat gear over shifting gravel on a rooftop, but his footfalls whispered in that church sanctuary as he entered, anyway. They were light and rapid, like the fluttering heartbeat of his namesake bird, but still audible over the radio when they shouldn't have been as he ran forward.

"He's down," Robin said, his voice rising now, somewhere between annoyed and angry. "He's had enough—he's _down_. Batman!"

Did he throw his small body between Bruce and a half-dead Bane? No, surely nothing so dramatic. Bruce would have stopped him, and it would have made a sound, however slight. Instead there was just the steady, rhythmic thumping of repeated blows—punches like drumbeats, never faltering at Robin's approach or at his startled words.

"Batman," Robin cried again, still angry but halfway to panicked now. "Bat— _Bruce_ , stop it!"

That, finally, got Bruce's attention, although if the small gasp that was audible on the radio was any indication, Robin instantly regretted his victory.

"Stay back."

The voice didn't sound like Bruce's—not his normal one, of course, but not his Batman-voice either. It wasn't the stereotypical harsh growl, full of power and confidence and leashed anger, ready to rain unholy hell down upon an uncooperative criminal. It was cold, and terribly blank, everything vital and human stripped out of it until there was nothing left but chilling fury.

Bruce couldn't imagine what he must have looked like in that moment. Whatever it was, it stopped Robin in his tracks. They were left in a tense stand-off in that church, with Bane making pitiful, rattling noises between them as he fought to keep breathing on the sanctuary floor.

Then, after a pause of a full two seconds that must have felt like a lifetime in the moment, Robin's voice returned, shaky but with strength underneath it. "Let's go," he said. "Bane's out cold, and then some. We can call Gordon—"

"I'm not finished," Bruce replied, in that same awful voice, even-toned, no trace of emotion at all.

" _He_ is," Robin said immediately, and Bruce could imagine the head-tilt that would have gone with it, a little gesture toward Bane's limp form on the floor. He could also picture the vulnerability that would have stolen across Robin's features a moment later, when he added, in a much softer voice, "Can't we just go home? Please?"

Bruce obviously couldn't hear it that night, but when he played the recording later he knew what Robin had really been asking. _You_ _'re scaring me. Please stop_.

Instead, Bruce must have made some kind of move to resume his attack on Bane, because Robin grunted slightly in surprise and said, "No, wait, Bruce—you _can_ _'t_ —"

Bruce was never sure what, exactly, Robin decided to do in that moment. Perhaps he grabbed at Bruce's arm as Bruce was delivering a punch. Maybe he stepped in between Bruce and Bane, trying to block a descending arm by hooking his elbow. Maybe he just jumped on Bruce without any finesse at all, forgetting all his training in a moment of panic, the way he had when he'd first woken up after the Joker's attack. Bruce never worked up the courage to ask, and Robin never volunteered the information.

However he did it, though, he intervened somehow in Bruce's next move, and Bruce's reaction was immediate and terrible.

" _Let go, Robin_ ," he snarled, the full force of a Command thrumming through his voice.

Robin cried out in pain and betrayal, as if he'd been struck full in the face. For all intents and purposes, he had been. There was a muffled thump, the sound of a small body hitting the floor, and then the swish of a much larger cape moving out of the way.

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Robin asked, and it came out hoarse.

As if in answer, Bruce added a second Command to the first. " _Stay out of my way._ "

Robin hissed, the sound of someone sucking their breath in through clenched teeth. "Fine," he said, as if spitting the word at Bruce. "I can't stop you."

At this point, Robin's mission report and the radio record agreed: He disappeared from the little church, leaving Bruce and Bane alone for approximately thirty-five seconds. Bruce's memory held no clues as to what might have happened during that time, not even vague impressions. In his best moments, he liked to think he stood there and wondered where Robin had gone, or regretted driving him away. In his worst ones, he knew he was probably trying to decide exactly how he wanted Bane to suffer, or else waiting for him to wake back up before he continued.

When the radio evidence returned, it was to Robin's voice, as if he'd never left, saying, "But I know somebody who _can_."

Three seconds later, a sonic boom ripped through Gotham's skyline, and Clark rather literally crashed the party.

"Batman?" that gentle Midwestern voice asked, concerned. "Robin said it was urgent. Are you all right?" A frown wasn't audible, but one could be heard forming in the pause between Clark's words anyway. "It … doesn't _seem_ urgent." Another pause, even more confused than the first. "That man needs a hospital, sooner rather than later."

"He's mine," Bruce's too-cold voice said.

"It's Bane," Robin explained. "The one that hurt him, last year. He's—he's not listening to me," he added quietly. "I didn't know what to do. I couldn't stop him."

"It's okay," Clark said, warm and reassuring, his whole demeanor shifting in an instant. "It's going to be fine, Robin. I promise, okay?"

"Okay," Robin said, obviously relieved. In that moment, he sounded genuinely childlike—as opposed to the role he played for people like Gordon—in a way that he usually only managed for Bruce, and, very rarely, for Alfred. If Bruce was a better man, he wouldn't have been jealous of that.

"This isn't your concern," Bruce said, still cold but with enough harshness now to sound at least passably like Batman. "Go back to Metropolis."

"Gladly," Clark said amiably. "Just as soon as those gentlemen outside are safely arrested, and this one is in medical care."

"I told you," Bruce said, "this one is mine."

There was a long, careful pause.

"You know I can't let you do that," Clark said, almost apologetic. "And I know you. You'll thank me for it, when your head's clearer."

"Is this really a fight you want to start?" Bruce asked. "In _my_ city?"

For the first time since they had met in the wake of a burning shipping container, Clark's voice took on an air of something approaching arrogance. It wasn't even ugly on him, the way it would be on most, just supremely confident—because he could afford to be, with the kind of power that lurked behind that gentle giant frame. "It won't _be_ a fight," he said, simple and firm. "Don't make me embarrass you in front of your kid," he added in the same breath, sounding a bit more like the Clark that Bruce recognized.

There was another pause, more pregnant than the last.

"Okay," Clark said, and it was absolutely his Superman-voice, this time. Had Bruce really ever thought that there wasn't a difference, between them? It wasn't as pronounced as his own persona-shift, but it was there. Even more surprisingly, both halves of Clark—unassuming human reporter and invincible alien hero—were truer to himself, somehow, than any of Bruce's personalities—idiot playboy, shrewd businessman, terrifying vigilante—were to him. "I'm taking Bane to a hospital. Last chance to step aside."

"No," Bruce said.

In the end, Clark was right: It _wasn_ _'t_ a fight, although not in the way in which he'd meant the words. Clark had never met anyone that he couldn't love-tap into unconsciousness at the first sign of trouble, and as a result he'd never bothered trying to learn any kind of combat moves. In fact, it would have been dangerous for him to try, given that one slip could have resulted in a fatal accident with an instructor or sparring partner. What he knew about throwing a punch he'd learned from action movies, and even with his super-human speed and senses it was possible—difficult, but possible—for a well-trained fighter to out-maneuver him for a while.

It was the invulnerability that was the real problem. Fights could be prolonged, but not won, with defense alone. No human—or even Bruce, with his binding-enhanced speed and power—could ever hope to hurt Clark.

Not without help, anyway.

Clark's footsteps were heavy on the sanctuary floor as he walked forward, toward Bane. It was an odd habit, for a man who could fly. An overcompensation, perhaps, a product of a life lived hiding who and what he was, always careful to keep his feet on the ground right up until the moment he decided not to.

In answer, there was only a small clicking noise from where Bruce was standing, followed by a little gasp in Robin's voice.

The radio squealed then, a tinny feedback signal Alfred later analyzed as a mild, extremely rare form of radiation. Harmless—to humans, anyway.

Clark's heavy steps faltered. His voice came out strained and incredulous. "Where did you …?"

Robin, trained by Bruce to make logical deductions, was already ahead of him. "You kept one!" he accused hotly. "After you took them from Lex on Crime Night, you kept one!"

Without his usual advantages of unbreakable skin, impossible speed, and unstoppable strength, not to mention off-balance from the effects of the Kryptonite Bruce had pulled out of the lead-shielded compartment in his utility belt, a completely untrained Clark would have been no match for Bruce even on his worst day. Bruce might have expected Clark to give up, to walk away—or at the very least to try to find something other than a direct approach—but, of course, that wasn't in Clark's nature.

According to Robin's later description of events, Clark—in obvious pain and even, at one point, struggling to breathe properly when in close proximity to the crystal in Bruce's gauntleted fist—did the best he could to get past Bruce and rescue Bane. He refused to give up, no matter how many times Bruce knocked him off his feet or landed a hard punch. Every single time Bruce threw him across the church or slammed him into a pew or a column, Clark picked himself up, slow and grimacing, and staggered forward to try again.

Eventually, Robin reported, Bruce had gotten tired of watching Clark get back on his feet, and put him down _hard_. The glowing green crystal drew blood from Clark's temple, and he either lost consciousness for a few seconds or was too disoriented by the impact and the Kryptonite so close to his face to react as Bruce dragged him half a foot sideways to the nearby railing that separated the altar from the sanctuary pews. Once there, Bruce used a zip-tie to secure Clark's wrists around one of the wrought-iron posts.

It wouldn't have held Clark normally, but Bruce kicked him over flat on his back and left the Kryptonite sitting in the hollow of his collarbone. With his broad shoulders, the thick cape pinned underneath him, his arms secured behind his head, and his muscles weakened from the Kryptonite, it would have taken Clark a while to twist his torso enough to drop the stone loose—if he'd had enough clarity of thought left to come up with that plan in the first place. It would have bought Bruce the time he needed, and that was all he'd been trying to accomplish.

"Superman!" Robin had said, sounding worried, when the blow that had drawn blood had landed, but from the sound of things he hadn't tried to interfere directly. Bruce guessed that he'd been wary of another Command, at the time, and had kept his mouth shut.

Apparently, though, watching Clark get zip-tied to the altar rail with Kryptonite on his collarbone was a step too far, because he'd spoken up, then.

"What if that thing kills him?" Robin asked, quietly.

From the sound, Bruce had been walking away, probably back over to where Bane was still wheezing for breath on the floor. At Robin's soft question, his steps paused. "I told him not to interfere," he said.

"You don't mean that," Robin said. Even on the radio recording, Bruce could hear the shocked tears in the voice. "You can't. This—this isn't you, Bruce. Stop and think about what you're doing."

"You shouldn't have involved him."

Robin's voice was still quiet, but stronger now, gaining confidence. "I was trying to save a life. Like you taught me to do."

A grunt, disbelieving, dismissive. "Bane wouldn't return the favor."

"Since when does _that_ matter?" Robin asked.

"You _know_ what he did to me!" Bruce said, and his voice was a sudden roar, frighteningly loud in the small church sanctuary. "What he took from me!"

"I do," Robin said, and for the first time his voice, too, was cold. "Your freedom. Your purpose. Your life. Everything you'd ever wanted or built for yourself. And he replaced them with uncertainty and fear and pain, _always_ pain, like an itch under your skin that you can't escape from." There was a brief pause, as if Robin stopped to shake his head. "I know exactly what he did to you, Bruce, because _you_ did the same thing to _me_. Don't stand there and talk about somebody taking things away from you, when you took away my whole world!"

"Don't compare me to him," Bruce snapped. "I didn't know what I was doing when I summoned you. I didn't know you'd have to stay, or what the price would be in the end."

"I know that," Robin said, a bit softer. "Why do you think I've been trying to find a way not to kill you?"

"You want me to _forgive_ him?"

"I didn't say that," Robin said. "He hurt you. You don't have to forgive him, if you don't want to. You taught me that." There was a soft shuffle of bare feet on carpet, which was how Bruce knew that somewhere along the line Robin had shifted his glamour. He was no longer in armor and cape and mask, but barefoot and bare-chested, dressed as he had been that first night in the garden, half-wild and fey around the edges, part creature and part child. "But we don't deal in revenge, Bruce. That's not the mission. You taught me that, too."

There was a brief pause. Bruce liked to think he was struggling to rationalize his thoughts. "He's dangerous. I'll be dead in a few months. What if he beats the charges, or escapes from prison…" He stopped then, obviously aware that he was making excuses. "He _deserves_ it," he hissed, viciously. "More than most."

"I know he does," Robin said again. "But that can't be our decision to make. Not like this."

"He would do it to me," Bruce said. "He thought he had, last year."

"That's why he's the bad guy," Robin said simply. His tears were back, along with the genuinely childlike voice, somehow innocent and wise at the same time. "Do you remember, when you asked me what made us the good guys? I know, now. _This_ is the difference." His sobs were quiet, but clearly audible, on the radio. "We're not the bad guys, Bruce. Don't be the bad guy. Please."

That was the moment that Bruce's rage broke, not forcefully like a dam breaking, but with a whimper, a scolded animal slinking away into the night. Later, that would be the first moment after the fight with Bane began that he could recall with any detail—Robin's voice, saying _Don_ _'t be the bad guy_ , and the accompanying look in his too-blue eyes as he did so, wide and hopeful and vulnerable.

Bruce didn't say anything, in response. He just walked away.

It was enough.

Robin went immediately to Clark, removing the Kryptonite and hurling it to the other side of the church. Once it was gone, color began to return to Clark's too-pale features, although it was some minutes before he was strong enough to snap the zip-tie around his wrists, which normally he'd have to concentrate _not_ to break by accident.

As soon as Clark was up to it, he flew Bane to Gotham Mercy while Robin handled calling the cops on the henchmen who were still outside. No words were spoken among the three of them; Robin and Clark had held a whispered conference as Clark was recovering that Bruce had studiously not eavesdropped on, and that was all. For the moment, they were ignoring everything that had just happened. Clark didn't say goodbye as he left, and the sonic boom a few minutes later meant that he'd elected to head straight back to Metropolis rather than face them again.

The fact that Robin chose to vanish as the sirens approached, rather than follow Bruce to the car, was a pretty good indicator that he had no intention of talking yet, either.

When Bruce got back to the Cave, for the first time in his entire life, Alfred did not appear with a tray of something appropriate to the situation and time of day to greet him. If the absence of his comforting presence on the radio was Bruce's first clue, this was his second; even Alfred had chosen to give him the silent treatment.

It hadn't been clear to Bruce exactly how much he had earned it, at that moment, but it would be soon.

/~*~/

Afterward, once Bruce had listened to the radio recording, he removed the remaining pieces of the Batman suit as if its segments were red-hot coals, burning him where they sat against his flesh. They ended up scattered around the computer and desk, some of them thrown the better part of fifteen feet despite their heft. For a moment, Bruce considered leaving them there, the scattered shrapnel of his broken life—but then he pictured Alfred, once more steadfastly cleaning up a mess he had made, and instead he went around and picked them up himself, even though it made his stomach roil to touch the armor after what he'd done.

The Manor was dark and silent as a tomb, when Bruce finally made his way upstairs. It was nearly four in the morning, approaching the deepest part of the night, but Bruce knew there was no hope of any sleep, not for him anyway, and he doubted for Alfred either. Robin, of course, never slept in the first place, but even if he was in the habit of it, Bruce thought he wouldn't have that night.

Bruce crept through his own house like a burglar, silent and careful, wary of being caught. It wasn't so much that he didn't want to see Alfred or Robin, but that he was afraid they didn't want to see him—not that he blamed them—and he wouldn't inflict his presence on them if he could avoid it. Luckily, the Manor was large enough to make chance encounters unlikely, and so Bruce slipped through the halls unseen, or at least undisturbed.

He had intended to go to his parents' room, to sequester himself away until enough hours had passed that he might find a way to start making apologies, but he found himself outdoors instead, walking the well-worn path that led to the old family cemetery at the edge of the garden. There had been many generations of Waynes buried there, of course, but Bruce had never known any of them; his grandparents had died before he'd been born, and his father had never spoken much of his family. Bruce only knew most of their names by their gravestones, their entire lives summed up by a little hyphen between a birth date and death date.

Except of course for the two most recent ones, which sat a bit off-center near the front of the little patch of land, side by side. The stones were identical, as well-matched in death as their owners had been in life, glossy black granite that was expensive without being showy. The names were clear cut and deep, so that even after twenty years they could be read from several feet away, even in the dark—but maybe that was just because Bruce knew the shape of the letters so well, after the hours he had spent staring at them.

 _Thomas Wayne_ , said the first, and _Martha Wayne_ , the second, and there were of course the usual descriptors and platitudes and dates underneath. None of those had ever meant much to Bruce, though. Their names were what mattered, weren't they? It was a reminder, of the people who once had been there and suddenly weren't anymore. A stone was a poor filler for the hole that was left behind, but at least it was something, a physical presence in a world that had been left aching and empty.

Bruce used to come out here often, right after it happened. The psychiatrist that he'd been required to see, if he'd wanted Alfred to remain his legal guardian without any undue fuss, had told him that it was common for children who'd lost a parent to talk to their graves, as if they could still hear them and respond, but Bruce had never really done that. He'd simply come out here to sit, not to be with them—they were gone, and he wasn't trying to pretend otherwise—but to remind himself that there was a time when they hadn't been. That once, they _had_ existed. Here was proof of the life they had lived.

As he got older, Bruce came less and less, until it became something of a ritual that he performed once a year, on the night they had died. He would come out here and sit with their graves, not to be with them, because they weren't there anymore, but just to remember. Once he'd decided on his mission and what it meant, it became a time of dedication, reminding himself why he was doing what he was doing, why it mattered, even on those days when it seemed like he wasn't accomplishing anything.

Never, in twenty years, had Bruce ever spoken to them.

Slowly, Bruce knelt down on the cold, damp earth. He wiped rainwater off the gravestones, starting with his father's. "You would be _so_ proud of what Leslie's doing, these days," he whispered to Thomas Wayne's grave in the darkness, and that was all it took.

Bruce talked until his voice was hoarse, until he was soaked through from the dew and the lingering storm. He told his parents' graves everything, starting with his decision to be Batman and the course his life had followed since, all the way through to the first fight with Bane and the crippling injury he'd received at his hands the winter before. He told them about the helplessness, the pain, the fear that he couldn't protect his city anymore, how his whole identity and worth as a person was tied up in his ability to fight, and how Bane had taken that away from him.

By then, he was speaking solely to his mother's grave as he talked about finding her book and deciding to try one last, desperate gambit that he didn't believe would work. He spoke about Robin, the creature-child who had appeared against all odds, who hadn't been anything like what Bruce would have expected, if he had been expecting anything in the first place. He spoke about the months of uneasy alliance, circling around each other, until something like a friendship formed, and then changed and grew into a partnership that Bruce had come to trust and depend on, until now he couldn't imagine going on alone.

When he finished, it was nearly dawn, and he was so cold that he'd stopped shivering some time earlier, which a lingering instinct in the hind part of Bruce's brain remembered was a bad sign. His legs were numb where he knelt in the soil, and he could no longer feel his fingers or any part of his face. If he'd been a regular human, without the extra power he'd stolen from Robin, he'd have frostbite damage at the very least.

"How long were you listening?" Bruce asked at last, when the morning's light was still weak and gray, but his voice had recovered enough that he felt he could speak without croaking.

Robin stepped forward from where he'd been waiting, until he stood at Bruce's side. With Bruce kneeling, they were nearly the same height. "You never told me about them," he said, nodding toward the gravestones.

"They died a long time ago," Bruce said.

"What happened to them?"

So Bruce told him. The night out as a family, so rare in their busy lives. The mugging, the gunshots that would echo in his nightmares forever. The senselessness of it, dying for the petty cash in a wallet when they had so much more they could have given, _would_ have given, if asked. The screams, the blood, the overwhelming sense-memory of it, even all these years later.

"They're the reason," Robin said when he was done, with sudden understanding in his voice.

"Are they," Bruce said, but the words came out without the right inflection for a question. "Or are they just the excuse I use, to tell myself what I'm doing is somehow righteous?"

For a moment, Bruce almost expected that Robin would have the answer, as if this was the culmination of all their lessons in ethics and morals. _As the sun rises and sets_ , Bruce thought, _so the teacher becomes the student_. He immediately felt an absurd urge to laugh, knowing it was more a sign of hysteria than mirth. That phrase was more likely to have come from some low-budget martial arts film than anything one of his actual teachers would ever have said; none of them had been much for proverbs or bite-size wisdom in easily digestible chunks. The world was more complicated than that. He'd known that before he'd ever set foot outside Gotham.

In any case, Robin didn't say anything. For a long time they were simply silent, standing and kneeling side by side and staring at the twin graves.

"I'm sorry," Bruce said eventually, very quietly. "Thank you for stopping me."

"I'm sorry, too," Robin said.

Bruce turned, only then realizing how stiff his frozen body had become. "For what?" he asked. "You didn't do anything wrong."

"Maybe not," Robin said, with a little shrug. "But we've been so focused on how the binding was changing _me_. We forgot to consider how it might be changing you."

Bruce blinked.

"You gave me empathy," Robin said. "Maybe it came from you. Maybe I _took_ it from you."

"No," Bruce said, shaking his head. "I won't blame my mistakes on an outside influence. I was obsessed with Bane and revenge before I ever summoned you. The binding just gave me the opportunity."

"And the power," Robin pointed out. "Last year you couldn't have hurt him so badly, no matter how much you wanted to."

That stung, but only because it was true. Even discounting the fact that without Robin's healing, Bruce would never have worn the cape and cowl again—Bruce at his prime, pre-binding, had fought Bane and lost. Bruce thought that with time, preparation, and better planning, he could have found a way to trick or incapacitate Bane, but those contingencies would have hinged on depriving him of his Venom steroid and the advantages in strength and stamina that the drug gave him. In a straight-up fight, head to head, regular human Bruce couldn't have beaten Bane any more than he could have beaten Clark without Kryptonite. Bane was just too strong.

"I've changed my mind," Robin announced suddenly, nodding as if to emphasize the decision he had made. "I'm not going to let you kill me early and keep the binding intact."

"Oh," Bruce said, taken aback. "Well, that's settled, then."

Had Robin still thought that was even an option, after their confrontation in the Cave over the little iron knife? Although the phrase was a bit on the nose, in this particular case, Bruce had thought he'd made his position relatively clear at the time: _Over my dead body_.

"You're too strong, with it," Robin continued. "You shouldn't have that kind of power, not unchecked. Not without me around to keep an eye on you."

As little as twenty-four hours ago, that might have been a joke: Robin, hanging around to keep _Bruce_ _'s_ ethics in check. This morning, Bruce conceded the point with a solemn nod. Perhaps that was what "we" was for—to keep an eye on each other, when one of you strayed from the path.

"So," Bruce said, resigned. "We're back to you killing me, instead."

At the moment, Bruce felt rather deserving of a death sentence at Robin's hands. He remembered a conversation from several months earlier in Robin's bedroom, about apologies and consequences and making things right, and wondered if it wasn't fitting somehow, after what he'd done to Bane. There should be a reckoning, for the line he'd crossed.

Meanwhile, Robin was busy chewing on his bottom lip. "Not quite yet," he said. "I want to see this book first, the one your mother had."

"Wait, what?" Bruce asked, genuinely thrown. "Why?"

/~*~/

Robin spent three days in the Manor's study, emerging only grudgingly at Alfred's insistence for meals, reading the little book that had started this entire mess. He refused to tell Bruce what he was looking for, or what he was planning, no matter how many times Bruce tried to get it out of him. Considering that Bruce was still walking on eggshells around the house and its occupants, given how colossally he'd failed with Bane, he didn't dare push too hard. He left Robin to his mystery research and tried to mend his other fences.

Alfred was the easiest, and the hardest. It was easiest because, as always, no words were required to communicate between them. Alfred saw that Bruce and Robin had somehow started the process of healing the damage that had been done, and that was enough to let Alfred begin to forgive him as well. It was also the hardest, though, because Alfred had known Bruce the longest, had raised him, and in many ways it was Alfred's expectations and opinions of him that meant the most. Disappointing Clark was unfortunate, disappointing Robin was unforgivable—but disappointing Alfred _hurt_ , in the way that only letting down a parent, even a surrogate one, truly can.

But on the second morning after the confrontation with Bane, Bruce's coffee was waiting for him with his breakfast tray, just the right temperature and brewed to perfection, and Bruce knew that things would be all right, between them. It would just take time. Sadly, that was the one thing that they were running out of, slowly but surely.

When Bruce picked up the mug, he found underneath it a folded napkin with a note. In Alfred's elegant cursive script was the phrase: _Call him and apologize_.

Bruce drank the coffee, because otherwise it would have seemed like he was rejecting Alfred's olive branch, but he left his breakfast to get cold on the side table. Instead, he went down to the Cave to retrieve the cell phone scrambler. If he hurried, he could catch Clark before he left for work.

Unsurprisingly, Clark didn't answer his phone, so Bruce left him a short message instead.

"My head is clearer now," he said, and it wasn't his Batman-voice, or his flippant playboy-voice, or even his businesslike Mr. Wayne-voice. Just his own voice, the one he used at home. His Bruce-voice, if there was such a thing. "You were right. Thank you." After a pause, he added. "I'm sorry." There was another pause, even longer, during which he simply breathed into the phone receiver. "I'll come to Metropolis, whenever you're ready to hear me say it in person."

After he hung up, Bruce stood for a while in the chilly shadows of the empty Cave, holding the dark phone in his hand, but it didn't ring.

Gordon put up the signal three nights in a row before Bruce could bring himself to put the armor back on and go meet him. He felt unworthy of it, and it was only the knowledge that he owed Gordon—the acting Police Commissioner, as expected, to be formalized at the start of the new year when inaugurations took place—some kind of explanation that eventually motivated him to wear it again.

Gordon waved a copy of Bane's medical file at Bruce like a weapon, listing off every single one of his injuries in an outraged voice. Bruce stood there in silence and listened, committing the sum total to memory and steadfastly ignoring the part of him that was still, even now, taking a visceral satisfaction in hearing the damage that had been done to the man who had hurt him. This, too, Bruce cataloged, staring straight into the darkness inside his own soul the same way that he would look into the depths of a shadow to discern what lay hidden at its heart.

 _Maybe I understand a little bit_ , Bruce had told Gordon once, on a different rooftop, _about having darkness inside you._

Bruce hadn't realized then how right he'd been, not just about Robin, but about himself. Maybe that was why this whole ridiculous plan had worked, why Robin had changed so drastically in such a relatively short period of time. If someone like Clark, for instance, had tried to teach him, would anything have come of it? Would Clark even be able to explain the rationale behind morals and ethics, or were things simply Good and Evil, to him, because that's the way they were, and always had been? If there was no darkness in Bruce, would he have been able to reach the light in Robin?

 _I am a creature of air and shadow_ , whispered Robin's voice in Bruce's memory, cold and proud.

 _Then again, so is Batman_ , Bruce thought. He always had been, even before Robin came along.

"—begin to cover the cost of the hospital bills, because the city … Are you even _listening_ to me?"

Bruce blinked behind his white lenses. "Yes," he lied.

Gordon crossed his arms so emphatically that he smacked himself with the thick folder he was holding in one hand. "What is wrong with you?" he snapped. "Bane's in critical condition. There's a chance he could die." Gordon paused for effect, letting that word sink in as he watched for some kind of crack in Bruce's non-literal armor. "If that happens," he said, slow and serious, "we are _done_. For good. Do you understand me?"

Bruce nodded, solemn. "If that happens," he said, his voice quiet enough that it almost didn't have the Batman-growl to it at all, "I'll put the handcuffs on myself."

It wasn't like Robin couldn't get into a jail cell to kill him, if he had to.

That softened Gordon considerably, but he didn't uncross his arms. "Just tell me," he said, also quiet. "Why?"

Bruce was silent for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts. Normally that was the sort of question that Batman would ignore, but he rather thought he owed Gordon this much, just this once. "The three months I was gone," he said at last, "I fought Bane and lost. It took that long to heal. He thought he'd killed me, or at least permanently sidelined me."

"Well," Gordon said, with a huff of cigarette smoke. Without Robin there to worry about, he didn't bother blowing the gray-blue cloud away from them. "He wasn't the only one. I spent weeks dredging the river and checking dumpsters. You could have sent a note."

Bruce winced behind the cowl, and hoped Gordon couldn't tell. "Seeing him again— _facing_ him again …"

Gordon sighed. "We all have our demons," he said, a bit ominously. "But this? This was not okay. I need to know that you understand that, or so help me, my first act as Acting Police Commissioner will be to renounce any official working relationship between the GCPD and the Batman."

Bruce froze. "There is no _official_ working relationship between the GCPD and the Batman," he said, very slowly.

Gordon shrugged. "I was planning a press conference. It seems to be working out okay in Metropolis with your alien friend."

Bruce thought about it for a moment. In the end, he didn't have the heart to tell Gordon that he'd be dead in a few months, if not sooner. "I'm not doing any interviews," he said instead, playing to Gordon's expectations.

That, more or less, was the end of it. Gordon had his reassurance that what had happened was a fluke, that Bruce was still on his side, and it was enough. In fact, he was about to publicly endorse Bruce rather than disowning him. Clark didn't return his phone call directly, but Bruce overheard him, briefly, speaking to Robin on the kitchen line. Alfred remained his usual steadfast presence, quiet and unobtrusive and critical as a capstone, holding everything else in place.

All the while, Robin continued to read.

/~*~/

"What do you know," Robin asked on the fourth day, "about changelings?"

"Huh—what?" Bruce asked, rather unimpressively. In his defense, it was barely a half-hour past six in the morning, and he had been deeply asleep, fighting off yet another dream of the fight with Bane.

"Changelings," Robin repeated with a sense of urgency to his voice, from where he was standing beside the bed, approximately six inches from Bruce's pillow. "What do you know about them?"

Bruce sat up, struggling to disentangle himself from the sheets. A distant memory of his mother's voice whispered in his mind, spinning a tale of a clever prince with a jealous uncle who coveted his rightful crown. The prince discovered that his uncle planned to have him killed, and so he traded places with a faerie changeling, tricking it into dying in his place. He had gone on several exciting adventures, earning friends and allies in many strange lands, gaining magical weapons and armor and trinkets to aid him, until the day came that he could return and reclaim his throne from the wicked uncle who had thought him long dead.

"Not much," Bruce admitted, still thick from sleep and strong memories. "Half-forgotten bedtime stories, mostly." He rubbed at his face, trying to concentrate. "Why?"

Robin's face was still, but his eyes were bright, almost feverish. "I think that's our way out," he said.

 _That_ woke Bruce in a hurry.

Twenty minutes later they sat side-by-side in the study, a breakfast tray between them. Alfred, of course, had woken no matter how quietly they'd attempted to come downstairs, and had promptly sent them both back up to shower and get properly dressed for the day, potentially fate-altering discovery notwithstanding. They'd been rewarded for their compliance with food and coffee—chocolate milk, for Robin—although neither of them had paid much attention to it, with Robin's announcement hanging over their heads.

Bruce's immediate thought, upon remembering his mother's bedtime story, was that Robin planned to summon a fae creature to take Bruce's place, dying at Robin's hand and fulfilling the binding's requirement. There were a few problems with that scenario, though, the first of which—and the most important to Bruce—being that it wouldn't save Robin. He would still revert to his prior personality once the binding broke, leaving him inhuman, amoral, and like as not to go on a killing spree unless Bruce was prepared to stop him with the little iron knife. Bruce might still die, or Alfred might, and either way they'd lose Robin, which wasn't an acceptable outcome as far as he was concerned.

In addition, according to Robin, adults were rarely the chosen targets for changelings. Children, at least, still had a touch of malleability to them, a hint of immortality however fragile, false, or fleeting. Infants, especially, were the best targets—hence why changelings in all the old tales were almost always babies—but puberty was the traditional cut off. Anyone older than that wasn't likely to survive the ritual, which required some flexibility of personality as the fae and mortal halves of the transaction were blurred together, each one taking on aspects of the other. Adults were too fixed in their ways, and tended to reject the process, which was nearly always fatal. It wasn't worth the risk.

Thirdly—and most problematically, from Robin's perspective—they would be summoning another member of Robin's kind in order to knowingly trap and murder it. No matter how dangerous, amoral, or inhuman, that wasn't something that Robin could countenance. He might have a drop of Bruce's blood in his system, but he was still a fae creature in his bones, and he wouldn't willingly condemn one of his own people to die without cause or provocation, no matter how much he wanted to save Bruce or himself.

In a way, Bruce was proud of him for that. If nothing else, it proved how much he'd changed.

"If we're not summoning a changeling for me," Bruce asked then, confused, "then what's our way out?"

Robin handed him the book, already open to a specific page in a section that Bruce had only skimmed during his many rereads. It had never seemed to be a particularly useful part, dealing primarily with crop health and seasonal renewal and fertility rites, so he hadn't bothered digging deeply into the specifics.

"There's a ritual," Robin said, and began to explain his idea.

"Are you sure about this?" Bruce asked, once Robin was finished.

"As sure as I can be," Robin admitted, with a twist to his mouth. "It's not like I've ever tried it before."

Bruce sat back in the stiff chair, feeling all the breath leave his chest at once. "I'll ask the question I should have asked you last spring," he said, once he'd gotten it back. "What's the price going to be, in the end?"

Robin just shook his head.

"Robin," Bruce scolded.

"I don't know," he said, and it sounded frustrated. "I just said I haven't done this before."

Bruce watched him for a moment in silence, wondering. Robin had been mischievous from the start, with a kind of childish cleverness that delighted in puzzles and tricks—but as far as Bruce could tell, he'd no talent for lying, not outright, and especially not to Bruce. But empathy, at its core, was the ability to understand how another person felt as if you were in that person's place—and you couldn't do that and not also gain the ability to manipulate them, even if only a little. They went hand in hand.

"Would you tell me," Bruce asked quietly, "if you _did_ know?"

Robin briefly averted his gaze, and that was answer enough.

"Robin—"

"What price could be higher?" Robin interrupted. "If we do nothing, we both die. What price could be higher than the one we're already paying?"

"I asked myself that same question before," Bruce said, with a warning in his tone. "And look what happened."

Robin sighed and sat back in his own chair, copying Bruce's posture. Bruce briefly wondered if it had been a conscious choice, or simply something he'd done without thinking, so used to mimicking the nearest mortal to pass as human that it was now an unbreakable habit. "It wasn't _all_ bad," he said, almost sullen. "Was it?"

Robin probably wanted him to answer immediately, either to make a joke of it or to reassure him that Robin's presence—however unexpected, however transitory—had been, ultimately, a welcome one. Instead, Bruce took the question seriously and gave it some thought.

"I shouldn't have made the bargain I did," Bruce said eventually, and ignored the hurt look that Robin gave him, hoping that he would understand in a moment. "What is a broken spine, in the grand scheme of things? The pain was manageable, and I wasn't even paralyzed. People have survived much more debilitating injuries, and lived perfectly ordinary, fulfilling lives. It should have been a wake-up call, and I ignored it."

Robin frowned at him. "But you would have lost Batman."

"Maybe," Bruce said. Then he shrugged. "Or at least, Batman as he was before." He'd done a lot of thinking over the last couple of days. After all, he'd had plenty of time for it. "There's more than one way to save a city. Gordon doesn't run around at night punching criminals in the face, and he's more a hero than I'll ever be. A broken spine shouldn't have stopped me, not if I'd cared enough to find another way."

Robin appeared to be considering the idea, weighing it. "So, you regret summoning me?"

"You're hurting," Bruce said immediately. He could still hear Robin's voice from the burned-out library, like a record on constant repeat in his memory. _I don_ _'t want to die, Bruce. It's not fair_. "Of course I regret it. I never should have brought you here."

Robin looked away again, but not quickly enough for Bruce to miss the way his eyes filled with tears in the corners.

"But that doesn't mean that I'd take it back," Bruce added.

Robin snapped his eyes back to Bruce, startled and hopeful.

"Some things," Bruce said, with an air of finality, "are worth the price." He held out his mother's little book.

"We'll do the ritual?" Robin asked, reaching for it.

Bruce hesitated, one last time. "When this is over, " he asked, "will you still be _you_?"

Robin took the book from him. "Probably less so than I am now," he said bluntly. "But more so than I will be if I kill you. Is that enough?"

Bruce closed his eyes. It wasn't, but it was all they were going to get.

"We'll do the ritual," he agreed. "What do we need?"

/~*~/

It took Alfred two days and a trip to a local spice market to gather the ingredients.

It took Robin a little longer than that to say his goodbyes.

Bruce allowed him to take his time, fully aware that this might not work at all, and that even if it did the Robin that came home at the end of it might not be same person, not in any way that counted, at least. He even did what he could to lengthen the process, finding excuses to delay the ritual another day. If Robin knew what Bruce was up to, he didn't say anything, but simply played along.

Bruce asked Selina to come by the Manor one afternoon for a marathon three-hour game of hide and seek, without giving her an explicit reason. He left another voice-mail for Clark, asking him to call Robin for help in Metropolis one night whether he needed it or not. They made a trip to Leslie's clinic for a check-up visit, so that she could fuss over Robin unnecessarily and give him a lollipop. He even told Gordon it was Robin's birthday, on a whim, and one of the first official actions of the new partnership between the GCPD and the Batman was the Acting Police Commissioner buying Robin an ice cream cone. The resulting photo made the national papers.

Bruce was still uncomfortable in the armor, but Gotham was in one of her quiet stretches, and they stopped nothing more dangerous than a mugging and one street harassment all week. News of Bane's condition had spread rapidly, along with the way Robin had single-handedly torn apart his entire crew, and everyone was holding their breath in the aftermath. It wouldn't last—it never did—but for now, the streets were as peaceful as they ever were, in Gotham, and Bruce was glad.

He didn't have the stomach for any real fighting, right now.

Then, on Friday night, a steady freezing rain rolled in and blanketed the city, leaving everything cold and wet and dark. The already-sparse streets became completely barren, not a car or a pedestrian in sight as Bruce and Robin began their rooftop circuit. If it had been a normal week, Bruce would have called off patrol entirely, used the night to stay in and catch up on casework or files from the office. There would be no crime to stop, tonight; no criminals would be out, with weather like this.

The moment that Bruce saw Robin's slowly spreading grin, he knew: Robin was ready. This, tonight, would be _their_ goodbye. What else could it have been, but this?

Bruce smiled at him. "I'm a little better at this, these days," he warned.

"Then come and catch me," Robin said, repeating the same words from so long ago, on another rainy night when there had been no patrol to do. "If you think you can."

With that, Robin turned and sprinted for the edge of the roof.

Bruce let him have half a heartbeat's lead, then took off running after him. If there was wetness on his cheeks, under the mask and the lenses, well—it _was_ raining. He'd have Alfred take a look at the seals, later.

They played tag until dawn arrived. If Bruce never quite managed to catch Robin, then Robin never quite managed to lose him, either.

They watched the sun come up from the roof of a skyscraper, sitting above the low-lying fog that clung to the streets from the previous night's rain. Bruce was so used to his enhanced senses now that he hardly noticed them, anymore—but this, he thought, he would miss the most. The strength and speed and agility were useful in the field, but being able to pick out every gradation of orange and red in the sunrise, _that_ was a worthy use of the binding's power.

"I'm going to miss them," Robin said, as if he'd read Bruce's mind.

Bruce made an inquisitive sort of grunt.

"The stars," Robin said. He leaned back on his hands, feet kicking off the edge of the skyscraper roof. "I can hear them, you know. They sing." He closed his eyes. "If this works, I'll be human." He held up one hand, then tilted it back and forth. "More or less, anyway. Enough that I won't be able to hear the starsongs, anymore."

Bruce tried to imagine what a star's song would sound like. What was Robin hearing? Some form of radiation? Or was it less scientific than that, something as inexplicable as his glamour or his ability to vanish from one location and reappear somewhere else instantaneously? Bruce had long ago given up trying to make physics work, in Robin's vicinity.

"I can't bring their songs back," he said at last, sadly. "But we can get a telescope, if you'd like."

Robin smiled at him, as if he knew what Bruce was doing, but he went along with the charade, asking what type and how it worked and how far they could see through it. By treating it like a foregone conclusion—not an _if_ , but a _when_ —they'd sidestepped the issue of whether or not the ritual would work. It was a cheap ploy, but it seemed to work nonetheless, settling Robin's nerves.

Day was breaking around them, and it was past time to go home.

"Tell Alfred that I'm ready," Robin said as they returned to the car. "We'll do the ritual tonight, at dusk."

/~*~/

Alfred put just enough extra effort into dinner Saturday night for it to be obvious that he was doing so on purpose, but not enough that anyone would have to acknowledge it out loud. Bruce hadn't bothered to make a list of which dishes Robin had preferred over others, during the months he'd lived here, but Alfred obviously had, and he'd built the menu tonight accordingly. When it came time to serve tea and coffee, with dessert, Alfred brought out a tray of hot chocolate instead, and they all three had a mug, in some kind of show of solidarity.

Then it was time; dusk came early, with autumn turning to winter. Bruce had a strong sense of déjà vu as they walked through the kitchen and toward the side door, headed for the garden entrance. Alfred stopped them there, armed with Bruce's heavy coat to ward him against the outdoor chill, and it might have been the exact same moment in time as that day last spring, save for the missing cane, kept in the car and used now only as a disguise to keep up appearances in public.

Once Bruce was appropriately bundled up against the icy weather, Alfred turned to Robin. Bruce expected him to nod, or offer a friendly smile, or—perhaps, since the situation was unprecedented—give Robin a shoulder pat or an encouraging word. Instead, for the first time that Bruce had ever seen, Alfred knelt down on one knee and pulled Robin into a full-blown hug.

"Good luck, Master Robin," Alfred said quietly.

Bruce blinked, taken aback. In all the years he'd known Alfred, he had never heard him call anyone _Master_ other than Bruce himself, and—once upon a time—Thomas Wayne before him. Until now, Robin had always been _young sir_. It was some unfathomable British rule, or perhaps an old-fashioned butler one, meant to distinguish guests—to whom you had to be polite, of course—from members of the household proper, to whom you owed your true loyalty.

From the look in Robin's eyes when he pulled back from the hug a moment later, he understood the difference, and what it meant. "Thanks, Alfred," he said.

Alfred stood back up, meeting Bruce's eyes for just a moment, as if searching for something. "I'll be just inside," he said, soft and sincere.

Bruce could only nod. He didn't quite trust his voice, just then.

Alfred handed Robin the little book, Bruce the duffel bag of ingredients, and then opened the door for them. "Be careful," he added, as they walked past him. "Both of you."

/~*~/

The darkening air was crisp, but Bruce hardly noticed the cold. The tension of waiting, wondering whether or not the ritual would work or what would be left of Robin afterward, was about to break, and his adrenaline was rising in anticipation. One way or another, after tonight it would be over. They would know whether they had their escape clause, whatever form it took or price it cost, or if one or both of them were doomed to their death sentences.

"Are you ready?" Bruce asked him, when they'd reached the little circle of river stones, which were still in place where they'd been left from last spring.

Robin bounced up and down on his toes once, shaking out his hands like a runner about to start a sprint. Then he nodded.

Bruce dropped the duffel bag and began pulling out items, mostly jars this time of different herbs. The summoning ritual had been mostly about willpower and words: a request, needing only a few specific keys to ensure that the plea was heard between worlds. This ritual, which was technically classified as a fertility rite of all things, was different; they didn't need to reach between worlds, because the fae half of the equation was already here, inside Robin.

What they needed, Robin had explained, was a _hole_. A place in this world where there was room for a child, but where none had been born. Instead of the more typical changeling process, where a fae and a mortal child were exchanged—which Bruce had vetoed, on the grounds that he didn't want to put an existing human child in danger—they were using the rarer form, where a barren couple could petition for a fae to raise as their own in place of a child they couldn't have.

The base ritual had been in the book, straightforward, if a bit too akin to a cooking recipe for Bruce's comfort, given all the _half a cup of crushed rosemary_ and _one ounce of grated lemon rind_ and a dozen other herbs and spices that had to be either placed in little containers around the circle, lit on fire, sprinkled on the ground, or tossed into the prevailing wind.

"Is all of this really necessary?" Bruce asked, the third time he nearly sneezed after a shift in the wind blew flakes of something back in his face.

"According to the book? Yes," Robin said. "Are we close?"

Bruce checked the recipe-ritual, running his finger down the ingredient list. "One more," he said, and took a pinch of plain old sea salt between his finger and thumb. "This should seal it, supposedly. Are you in?"

Robin stepped over the barrier of river stones and into the circle they formed on the garden path. "Remember," he said, "speak the words and think of me—not as I was when I arrived, but as I am _now_. Neither entirely fae nor mortal, but somewhere in between. That should ensure that the ritual takes hold of me, _without_ changing me, and not some other fae who happens to be close to the barrier between worlds."

Bruce nodded. "When …" He took a deep breath. "When will we know if it worked?"

Robin crossed his arms over his bare chest, as if he was giving himself a hug. "I don't know," he said. "We'll feel it, I think, if it takes."

Bruce raised the pinch of salt.

"Bruce?" Robin asked, his voice trembling.

Bruce paused. Robin sounded very young in that moment, standing by himself inside the ring of river stones. He didn't seem like an otherworldly creature then, just a little boy under-dressed for the November cold, scared and alone. Without realizing that he was going to do it, Bruce knelt on one knee and opened his arms, being careful to keep the pinch of salt tightly between his finger and thumb.

Robin leapt across the stones, hitting Bruce with nearly enough force to knock him over. Bruce managed to catch him, holding Robin with one hand on the back of his head and one arm around his shoulders. He pressed Robin's small frame tightly to his own chest, as if that would stop the painful feeling that was creeping up his ribcage.

"It's going to be all right," Bruce whispered.

"You don't know that," Robin pointed out, his words muffled somewhat because his face was squished into the side of Bruce's neck.

"No, I don't," Bruce admitted.

"Then why did you say it?" Robin asked.

"Because you needed to hear it," Bruce told him, and pulled back far enough to look Robin in the eye. "Are you ready?"

Robin nodded, settling his shoulders like a soldier about to lead a charge into enemy territory. He swiped at the tears on his cheeks, and then turned and walked back to the little circle of river stones. Once he was inside them, he turned back around to face Bruce. "Okay," he said. "Do it."

Bruce called up the words of the ritual, thought of Robin as he was, and threw the salt into the ring.

/~*~/

There was a flash of light, green like new spring—like Robin's skin, seen without a glamour in the bathroom mirror—and the sense of something ripping, or trying to rip— _the binding!_ Bruce thought, reeling, as he felt it trying to come loose in his chest—and then something scrabbling for purchase, trying to hold on—it was Robin, Bruce realized, reaching out to him as something tried to wrench him away—

 _Bruce!_

—and it _hurt_ , but Bruce reached back, unwilling to risk losing him now, as the world tilted and spun around them in a maelstrom of color and wind, like someone had plucked them out of the garden and dropped them into a hurricane, loud and confusing—

 _Bruce!_ It was Robin's voice, clear like a bell, ringing inside his head. _Don_ _'t let go!_

—and Bruce didn't understand, because he could still feel Robin, wasn't he here, right here, inside Bruce's chest where he'd always been—

And then the maelstrom stopped.

/~*~/

Bruce stumbled, like someone walking down a flight of stairs who expected one less than there was in reality, nearly falling over. He blinked rapidly, trying to get his bearings, breathing shallowly to stave off a fleeting bout of nausea. Someone bumped into him from behind, jostling him further, and he ran up against an aluminum railing of some sort at about waist height. Another person next to him tapped him on the elbow and said something to him, something he didn't quite catch—it was loud, here, the low rumble of a boisterous crowd waiting for something.

Still disoriented, Bruce turned, muttering a half-hearted apology to the person who'd spoken to him. Stretching up behind him was a tall set of metal bleachers; he was in some sort of open-air stadium, at one of the aisle entrances. The floor was grass and dirt, with large burlap runners here and there to provide traction against the mud from the freezing rain the night before. There were floodlights, suspended high in massive riggings above, most white but some in primary colors, blinking on and off and creating a carnival atmosphere. A moment later the smells hit him: fried foods, animals and their leavings, too many people pressed close together against the night's chill.

He walked away from the commotion, toward the concourse, careful to keep his head ducked in case anyone here could recognize him on sight, wondering what had happened. He'd been in the garden, doing the ritual with Robin, the one that was supposed to turn him from a full fae into a half-human changeling. Had something gone wrong? Where was he now, and what had happened to Robin?

 _Don_ _'t let go_ , Robin's voice whispered in Bruce's mind.

The "concourse" was really just an open field, separated from the parking lot by a fence with a gate, and it was nearly empty save for a few stragglers at concession stands or game booths. Whatever the show was, it was starting, and most of the crowd was already seated in the stands. As Bruce made his way out and then under the shelter provided by the overhanging bleachers, he could hear the people cheer as the announcer began to speak and music began to play. The structure itself was a haphazard construction, more a collection of large tents than a building, the sort of thing that could be put together and taken apart in a day to be moved from place to place—a traveling show, in the old style. _Rare, these days, for things like this not to use permanent city stadiums_ , Bruce thought, and it made him wonder why.

"It's part of the charm," a voice said by his elbow.

Bruce, startled, turned.

Robin was standing next to him.

 _No_ , Bruce thought a moment later. _It isn_ _'t him, not quite._

It was a boy, maybe nine years old, with Robin's golden skin and black hair and blue eyes—but something was just slightly off about him, something Bruce—for all his eye for detail—couldn't name, but could see all the same. He was dressed for the cold, in pants and tennis-shoes and a zipped-up coat, but his cheeks were red from the wind chill, and he didn't have any gloves or a scarf.

"Hi," the boy said, brightly, and held out his bare hand. "I'm Dick. Well, Richard, but I go by Dick."

Bruce swallowed, finding his throat suddenly tight. "Hi," he said, and gently shook the boy's hand. The little fingers were cold, in a way that Robin's had never been, no matter how little he'd been wearing. Bruce fought to keep his voice even. "Hello. It's … It's nice to meet you."

"You were wondering, about the tents and stuff," the boy said. "I could tell. Lots of people do. Haly says it's part of the charm—that's Mr. Haly, he owns the circus—anyway, it's what makes us special, we do things the old fashioned way, mostly. What's your favorite act? Mine's the elephants. Hey, do you want to meet them? I can get you backstage, if you want."

Bruce blinked. "Oh, you … you're a part of the … of the circus?"

The boy must have thought him slow-witted, with how much trouble he was having speaking, but there was no sign of mockery or derision in his demeanor, just an open friendliness.

"Yeah!" the boy—Dick?—said. "I saw you standing here and thought I'd say hello. You look sort of familiar, you know? Have we met somewhere before?"

Bruce nearly choked. "Have you ever been to Gotham?" he asked, heart leaping into his throat.

"Oh, no, Haly doesn't normally let us stop here. I don't think he likes it much, actually. No offense, or anything! I'm sure it's a nice city." Dick patted Bruce's arm, like he was trying to console him for living in a place people avoided. "But you sort of seemed like you were looking for someone, or like you needed to talk to somebody, so I thought maybe I would say hello. Do you want to come meet the elephants? They always make me feel better, when I'm upset."

Bruce was just opening his mouth to introduce himself properly when there was a swell of noise from the crowd, an excited roar of approval, and Dick's whole face lit up.

"Oh, that's the Flying Grayson intro!" he said, bouncing on his toes. "You have to see this, they're the best!"

Bruce smiled, indulgent despite himself. "I thought the elephants were your favorite?" he asked, but he didn't protest as the boy grabbed his hand and tugged him toward one of the aisle entrances so that they could see into the center ring.

The announcer was introducing a couple, a man and woman in their early thirties, with the lithe builds and solid muscles of serious gymnasts. As they watched, the couple waved to the cheering crowd and then dashed off to opposite towers and began to climb to the tops, where an aerialist course was strung and waiting above.

"The elephants _are_ my favorite," Dick said, and jumped up on the railing that divided the lowest bleacher level from the performing rings, pulling Bruce up unabashedly behind him. "But my parents are the best trapeze artists in the business. You'll see!"

 _Parents,_ Bruce thought, and the word struck him like a knife through the heart. Was _this_ the price the ritual demanded, then? In order to save Robin, to see a part of him live on in this friendly, excited little boy, would Bruce have to give him up forever? After all, Bruce had no claim on this boy, no right to be a part of his life. The circus would move on, travel to a new city, and leave Bruce behind, nothing but a brief acquaintance easily forgotten.

 _It_ _'s better this way,_ Bruce said internally, and tried to convince himself that he meant it. As long as Robin was happy—or Dick was, if they were really the same person, or _mostly_ the same person—then it wouldn't matter that Bruce's heart was breaking. Letting him go was the right thing to do.

 _Don_ _'t let go_ _!_ Robin's voice rang in his mind. Somewhere in Bruce's chest, the remnants of the binding tugged.

"Wait," Dick said, sounding uneasy. "That rope doesn't look right …"

And that's when Bruce heard the first scream.

/~*~/

Bruce didn't make a conscious decision to vault over the railing and into the center ring, in the chaos that followed the fatal fall of John and Mary Grayson; it just happened, an instinct he couldn't ignore that had him chasing after Dick the moment the boy bolted from his side. Luckily, the crowd was too shocked and distracted to notice Bruce Wayne doing something everyone knew he wasn't capable of doing after his spinal injury, but honestly Bruce wouldn't have hesitated had there been a news camera filming him. Even if it would expose him as Batman—that was less important, in that moment, than following Dick, because the boy was screaming, and Bruce _knew_ that scream. He remembered it, in his bones. That was the scream of a little boy watching his parents die in front of him, and Bruce was not physically capable of ignoring that.

Dick was fast, and he moved like Robin had—light-footed, agile, the true child of acrobats—twisting through the circus staff and emergency personnel that had come rushing forward, beating all of them to the broken bodies on the center ring floor. Bruce, larger and slowed by the rushing, panicking crowd, ended up several steps behind him. By the time he broke through, Dick was already on his knees next to his parents, shocked into stillness.

Someone else might have grabbed at the boy, tried to pull him away or shield his eyes, but Bruce knew better. Dick had already seen them fall, was already staring at their broken bodies. What point was there now in trying to tear him away from the sight? He would see it now in his dreams for the rest of his life. Better to let him stare at it, to fix the image as it really was, rather than let trauma and shock replace it with a nightmare vision, something even worse than the cold, harsh reality.

Instead, Bruce just stood beside him, shrugged off the heavy coat that Alfred had so carefully wrapped around him in the kitchen, and placed it on Dick's shoulders. It swamped the boy's small frame, in what would have been a comical sight under other circumstances, but Bruce knew the warmth would help a little with the physical effects of the shock that was coming. He couldn't do anything about the emotional ones, but he could keep the boy warm, at least.

Slowly, Dick's hands crept up and grasped at the edges of the coat, pulling it tighter around him. Turning, wide-eyed, he looked at Bruce for a moment without seeing him.

"Dick?" Bruce asked quietly.

Dick shuddered, letting out a full-throated sob like someone was ripping his small body in half. " _Bruce?_ " he asked, and his eyes cleared—and it was Robin behind them, now, where he hadn't been a few moments before, like someone had flipped a switch from _off_ to _on_.

Bruce didn't hesitate. He bent down and picked him up, Bruce Wayne's supposed spinal injury be damned, and held him to his chest. "I'm so sorry," he whispered.

"Was this the price?" Robin demanded. "Did we kill them, Bruce?"

"No," Bruce said, and hoped desperately that it was true. "You said there was something wrong with the rope. It had nothing to do with us."

"They were my parents," Robin said—or was he still Dick, too? "I remember—a whole lifetime—they were my parents, and we killed them. It's my _fault,_ " he said, and descended into broken, harsh crying.

Bruce closed his eyes and held him tighter, only realizing after he was doing it that he'd started to rock slightly, side to side. "No," he repeated. "No, it's not your fault," he said. "You didn't do anything wrong."

 _We didn_ _'t know_ , Bruce thought. _We didn_ _'t know what the price would be,_ and wondered if he'd ever forgive himself—because they had known there would _be_ a price, even if they hadn't known the specifics, even if they never could have predicted something like this. But this was Gotham—and it was always the innocent who paid, in the end.

By then the initial panic was turning into something approaching a more organized response. In the distance Bruce could hear sirens, so someone must have called for an ambulance, although it was already much too late to do any good other than as a transport to the morgue. He kept expecting someone to come and take Dick out of his arms—surely he had other family, here, or close friends at least—but something about Bruce's body language must have announced how he would have reacted had someone tried. No one decided to push him, at least not until the cops arrived to take statements.

There were benefits, then, to being a Wayne in Gotham. Bruce stood his ground and didn't let Dick go even when a couple of detectives tried to insist that they needed to take him off alone to get his eye-witness account of the accident.

"He's a minor," Bruce informed them flatly. "Until someone figures out who his legal guardian is, since his parents are the victims in question, there's no one to give you permission to question him."

Dick was silent throughout, holding tight to Bruce and hiding his tear-streaked face in Bruce's shoulder. If there was any question of where he wanted to be, it was settled when Bruce was forced to produce his wallet and photo ID, as if half the cops couldn't have recognized him once they'd gotten a good look at his face and heard his name. The moment Bruce put him down, Dick clung to his leg as if afraid Bruce was going to disappear if he let go of him. Bruce picked him back up as soon as his wallet was back in his pocket, settling his reassuring weight—so different from Robin's unnatural lightness—on his hip, where it already felt like the boy belonged.

Eventually Dick slipped into a fitful, exhausted sleep, and that's how Gordon found them maybe an hour later, sitting on the lowest level of the bleachers with the other witnesses who had been detained the longest.

"They told me Bruce Wayne was here, making things difficult," Gordon said as he walked up with two little Styrofoam cups of steaming coffee, "but I wasn't sure I believed it until just now."

Bruce would have scolded him, but Gordon had spoken softly enough not to wake Dick, who stirred briefly against Bruce's chest but didn't wake. Instead, Bruce reached out and took the cheap coffee, grimacing briefly at the burnt smell but glad of the warmth from the steam, if nothing else. He'd gladly endure the freezing temperatures, since Dick needed his coat more than he did right now, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of just how cold it was, now that it was approaching midnight.

"Everyone likes the circus," Bruce said, and held the coffee close to his face with the hand that wasn't holding Dick, so that the steam could thaw out his face without him having to drink any of it. "I heard you got a promotion. Police Chief, or something?"

Gordon shook his head. "Something like that." He nodded toward Dick's small form. "So, what's the deal? My detectives say you won't let them talk to the kid."

"No," Bruce said. "I wouldn't let them take him off by himself to question. They can ask him whatever they want—as long as he's with me."

Gordon's eyes narrowed slightly. "Do you know him?"

"Not before tonight," Bruce said, wondering if that was, technically speaking, a lie. "We met in the concourse just as the show was starting. He was telling me about his parents when the fall happened."

"So why the protective streak?"

Bruce stared at him for a moment. "Do you have to ask me that?" he said, very quietly. "You were there, that night."

To Gordon's credit, he immediately dropped his gaze and shuffled from foot to foot, obviously a bit embarrassed to have forgotten. Bruce had spent a long time carefully crafting his playboy image, and it had effectively erased the tragic little orphan one that he'd carried as a teenager, but Gordon should have known better. He'd been a rookie detective on the Wayne murder case; he'd known Bruce, back then, and he'd done his best to stay in touch as Bruce had grown up. He'd seen the scars that were left, maybe better than anyone besides Alfred or Leslie. It was one of the reasons Bruce had distanced himself from Gordon; if he was going to use him, as Batman, then it was too dangerous to befriend him as Bruce Wayne. Gordon could have put the pieces together, otherwise.

"Kindred spirit, huh?" Gordon said eventually.

Bruce glanced down at Dick's sleeping form. "Maybe I just know what it's like," he said, "to lose everything, all at once, and end up surrounded by strangers asking questions." Then he shrugged, careful not to spill his awful coffee. "I may not be much of a friendly face, but he … I don't know, imprinted on me, or something. Maybe he can tell somehow that I know what he's going through."

"Well, social services is on their way," Gordon said. "They'll take custody until we can figure out if he has any other family."

Bruce fought the instinctive urge to grip Dick tighter, or take him and start running. After all this, would he lose him anyway? "Will they place him in a group home? Because, I have more than enough space, at the Manor—"

"That's very kind of you, Mr. Wayne," Gordon interrupted, relatively gently for a man more given to gruffness as a general rule, "but you know it doesn't work that way. We have to think about what's best for Richard."

"His name is Dick," Bruce said.

"Dick, then," Gordon said. "If he's imprinted on you, as you say, it might be best to make a clean break now rather than prolong a dependence on you that will end up being temporary."

Bruce swallowed. "What if it wasn't?" he asked, before he thought about what that meant. "Temporary, I mean."

It was Gordon's turn to stare at him. "You're talking about a permanent placement? With _you_?" He couldn't quite keep the incredulity out of his voice, if he was even trying at all. "That's a very serious decision, Mr. Wayne. Not one to be made lightly, or during a moment of high emotion."

"I'm aware," Bruce said. "But it's not about what I want—it's about what's best for Dick. If I can help him, keep him from going through even a little of what I did, after _my_ parents …"

Gordon crossed his arms. "You're serious."

"I am," Bruce said.

"Well," Gordon said, sighing, "honestly, I probably can't stop you. You write a few checks, shake a few hands, make a few phone calls—you're Bruce Wayne, this is Gotham. You want the boy, you'll get him."

Bruce grimaced. "That's what people will think, isn't it?"

That softened Gordon, although not quite to the point of relaxing entirely. "You really _do_ mean well, don't you?"

"Occasionally," Bruce said dryly. "Don't tell anyone; you'll ruin my image."

Gordon chewed on his bottom lip for a moment, in lieu of the cigarette that he couldn't smoke while officially on duty. "Fine," he said. "I'll make a phone call." He pointed a finger at Bruce, possibly one of the only cops—and city officials, now that he was Commissioner—who wasn't, and never would be, intimidated by the Wayne name or bank account. " _Don't_ make me regret it, Mr. Wayne."

That made the second time Jim Gordon had seen fit to threaten Bruce over the well-being of a child under his care, in a situation where Bruce theoretically could have made life difficult for him in retaliation, if he'd wanted to. "Best man that I know," Bruce muttered, under his breath.

As Gordon walked off, Dick began to stir.

"Hey," Bruce said quietly, shifting Dick's weight against his numb shoulder. "Are you ready to go home?"

"Please," Dick said, bleary and red-eyed.

So Bruce asked for a phone of his own, and called Alfred.

/~*~/

Later, once Dick had been settled in Robin's bedroom—in his bedroom? in his old bedroom?—Bruce found himself standing in the doorway, watching the boy sleep. Robin never had, save for the time he'd been healing after the Joker's attack, and that had been more of a coma than anything that appeared healthy or restful. Dick slept more naturally, a child's exhaustion coloring his features, but the trauma and stress of the night's events were painted clearly on his face, even as he dreamed.

"Sir?"

Bruce turned, just enough to catch sight of Alfred—who was hovering nearby—without taking his attention away from Dick, tossing and turning in his bed and tangling himself in his sheets.

"Alfred," Bruce said, and suddenly there was a bright, hot flash of panic in his chest. "What am I _doing?"_

Alfred stared at him for a moment, and then slowly raised an eyebrow. "It appears that you've taken custody of a child, Master Bruce. Or started the process, anyway."

There hadn't been time for long explanations—Bruce wasn't even sure exactly what had happened, in truth—but Bruce had explained the bare bones: the ritual had worked, at least in part. Robin was Dick, and Dick was Robin; he remembered them, somehow, but he remembered being Dick, too, as if he'd lived a full life with the circus and the parents that he'd just lost. And, of course, Bruce had petitioned Gordon for the right to bring Robin/Dick home by promising that they'd keep him. Forever. Or until he was eighteen, at least.

"But that's …that's _absurd,_ " Bruce insisted. "I can't raise a child!"

Alfred actually smiled at him. "Why, sir, what exactly did you think you'd been doing, for the last nine months?"

Bruce paused. "But … I made so many mistakes, Alfred. Look what happened with Bane! And I'll _keep_ making them. I can't be a parent."

"Oh, Master Bruce," Alfred said, and patted him on the elbow. "Every parent makes mistakes. That's not what's important."

Bruce, reeling, clutched at the certainty in Alfred's tone. "Then what is?" he asked.

"Only two things," Alfred said, very seriously. "Will you provide for him, to the best of your ability? Protect him, from the things that you can, and teach him to protect himself from the things that you can't?"

Bruce nodded. "Yes, of course."

"All right," Alfred said. "Then, secondly, and very simply, will you love him?"

Bruce swallowed. "I think I already do," he admitted, and it terrified him.

Alfred smiled again, for the second time in under a minute, which Bruce thought must have been a record. "You'll do just fine, sir," he said.

"But he already had parents," Bruce protested. "Real ones, in his memory at least. I won't compare to them. I can't, no matter how hard I try."

"You don't have to," Alfred said, and for the first time he sounded sad. "You can't replace them, and he wouldn't want you to, anyway. He'll need something different, from you."

Bruce finally took his eyes off Dick's sleeping form, just long enough to meet Alfred's gaze. "But, is it worth it?" He wasn't sure at first what he was even asking. "In the end, will it be worth it?"

"It was for me, with you," Alfred said, very softly. "It still is, every single day."

Bruce blinked, shocked at the prickling feel of tears behind his eyes. This was exactly the sort of thing that was never spoken, between them—understood, perhaps, but never said out loud, precisely for this reason.

"Family," Alfred added, "is what we make of it, Master Bruce. No more, never less. Remember that."

With that, Alfred turned and padded silently away, leaving Bruce alone in the doorway to Dick's dark room.

How long Bruce stood there, thinking, he wasn't sure. It might have been all night, save that Dick woke at some point and said his name. Whether he knew Bruce was there, or was simply calling out for a familiar face, Bruce didn't know, but he was glad to have been close enough to respond.

"Bruce?"

"I'm here," he said, and walked to the edge of the bed. "Do you need anything?"

Dick sat up, pushing away the thick winter comforter Alfred had produced once they realized that Robin's bed was still made up for last spring, since Robin, of course, had never actually used it. "Can't sleep," he murmured, contradicting himself by being half-asleep and slurring his words. "Every time I close my eyes I see them falling." He immediately shivered, probably cold now that he'd pushed away his covers and the air was hitting his sweat-soaked skin.

Bruce gestured to the bed. "Mind if I sit?" he asked.

Dick scooted over to make room.

Bruce kicked off his loafers and sat on the bed, leaning up against the headboard. Unsurprisingly, as soon as he was settled, Dick curled up against his side under one arm. From all signs, Dick was going to be a tactile child, even when he wasn't freezing and traumatized; for now, Bruce just pulled the comforter up around them both and tried to find a position where Dick's elbows and knees weren't jabbing him anywhere tender.

"Can you tell me a story?" Dick said, settling his head on Bruce's chest and closing his eyes.

"A bedtime story?" Bruce asked, feeling a second flash of panic at immediately being put on the spot. Alfred had mentioned that it was acceptable to make mistakes, but he had been hoping to get through the first twenty-four hours without one, at least.

"Everything's so quiet," Dick said—or, no, in that moment he sounded more like Robin. Bruce wasn't sure how he could tell the difference, but he could. "The stars are _gone_ , Bruce. I can't hear them. It's too quiet." He shivered again, and something shifted; he was Dick again, human and young and hurting. "The rope was wrong. Why didn't they see that the rope was wrong? They always check their equipment before a show. But they didn't, and all I can see is them falling, falling, _falling_ —"

"Shhhh," Bruce said, and brushed Dick's hair back from his forehead. "It's going to be okay."

Then Bruce took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and remembered his mother's voice from long ago. If a story was what Dick wanted, to help him forget—even if only for a little while—then Bruce would do his best to give him that. "The world all around us is not the only world there is," he said, trying to match the tone his mother had always used: whimsical, but authoritative. "Behind the world we can see, there is another that we cannot see, hidden and secret."

"Hmmm?" Dick mumbled, sounding intrigued.

"That," Bruce said, "is where the fae come from."

/~*~/


	13. Epilogue

"There you are, sir," Alfred said as he opened the front door.

Bruce stepped across the threshold from the porch, moving slowly so that he didn't drop or dislodge any of the bags or boxes he was carrying. The rush of warm air tugged at his coat and hair, swirling out behind him and pushing the slowly-drifting snow away from the Manor's polished hardwood, as if it was afraid to disappoint Alfred by making a mess of his perfectly-shiny floors.

Once Bruce was inside, he turned and glanced back out into the cold. "Come on, lad," he said.

Behind him, scurrying quickly across the icy brick of the Manor's front steps as if half-afraid that Bruce would leave him behind if he gave him the chance, came Dick. The boy was carrying almost as many items as Bruce, albeit smaller ones; he'd insisted, and Bruce had relented, not wanting to wound his pride. There were still plenty left in the car for Alfred to fetch, anyway.

"I _still_ think you went a little overboard," Dick said as he walked in, his voice partially choked because his chin was tilted high into the air, being used as a stabilizer for the stack of boxes in his hands. Shopping bags hung off his wrists and forearms to either side, making him look like a small, slender coat rack. "I was doing fine with the ten outfits you bought me that first week. And I'll just outgrow most of this stuff in a year, anyway."

Bruce felt an urge to smile. In truth, he wouldn't mind the chore of buying a growing Dick an entire new wardrobe next year—because that meant that Dick would still be here next year, alive and breathing and a part of their lives, to buy clothes _for._ It wasn't like Bruce couldn't afford them.

Besides, if Dick thought this was extravagant, wait until he saw the stack of Christmas presents Alfred had been busy wrapping while Bruce and Dick were out shopping. If he'd been suspicious at Bruce's uncharacteristic urge to drive them himself and leave Alfred behind, especially given the crowds and general chaos of retail stores on Christmas Eve—although that was mitigated somewhat by the kinds of stores that Bruce Wayne tended to frequent—then Dick hadn't said anything, content to wait and see what Bruce was up to.

"We'll wait to worry about that next year," Bruce said instead, and gestured toward the staircase with his burden. "Go on up. Let's get this stuff put away."

They had made it through roughly half of the bags and boxes, removing the tags and tissue paper—they'd gotten distracted by a furious, if ultimately playful, "snowball" fight with crumpled-up balls of the latter—when Alfred appeared in the doorway of Dick's room and informed them that they had guests in the parlor.

"Guests?" Dick asked, poking his head out from behind the bed he was using as cover, as if this were an utterly foreign concept.

To be fair, the Manor was a rather secluded location on the best of days. Most of the time it was just the three of them, and Alfred's presence was so quietly competent that it could be easily overlooked or forgotten, at times. The only visitors they'd had since Dick's midnight arrival six weeks earlier had been from the social worker assigned to his case, the detectives investigating the "accidental" death of his parents, and one supervised and emotional farewell from various circus personnel as they'd departed Gotham.

Bruce had done his best to keep the press away from Dick, for the time being, and he'd taken a short leave of absence from the office save for emergency phone calls or the occasional paperwork that Alfred ferried back and forth from Lucius Fox or his assistants. They'd been living in a safe, isolated bubble for last month and a half, getting used to each other in their slightly-shifted roles, but it seemed like that was about to end.

"Shall we say hello?" Bruce asked.

Dick shrugged in a noncommittal sort of way, as if he didn't want to go but was afraid to disappoint Bruce by saying so.

Bruce frowned. He tried not to worry about Dick too much, about how different he sometimes seemed from the Robin he remembered, or even the boy he'd briefly met behind the circus bleachers before the fall of John and Mary Grayson. There were times when Dick seemed oddly lethargic, or just too quiet, as if he wanted to duck and hide behind Bruce and never come out. He would shadow Bruce in public, shrinking away from new people, wary of touching anyone or talking to strangers. It was a shocking transformation, for the boy who'd so eagerly greeted him that first night and asked him if he wanted to come and meet the elephants.

But then, at other times, Bruce looked at him and all he could see was _Robin_ —that eager grin, full of mischief and danger and fun, boundless energy and open curiosity, a fondness for high places and improbable acrobatics, and of course an insatiable sweet tooth that Alfred indulged more than he should have. They had pretend snowball fights with tissue paper, or chased each other through the Manor, or played hide and seek at two in the morning when Dick couldn't sleep. Sometimes Bruce could almost forget that Dick's mortal life had been real, to him, regardless of how the memories had been fabricated by the ritual. Sometimes, Bruce forgot that he was grieving as much as Bruce ever had, and in much the same way.

It would just take time. Bruce knew that better than most—time, and some sense of closure. Bruce couldn't make the first go any faster, and he had been working on the second.

"Come on," he said, a bit gentler, and put an arm around Dick's shoulders. "Let's at least see who it is."

/~*~/

When Bruce and Dick entered the downstairs parlor, it was to find Jim Gordon standing awkwardly with a cup of hot tea in the center of the room, looking distinctly afraid to touch any of the expensive vases or artwork on the walls. Every few seconds he would glance frantically around as if to make sure that the room's second occupant, a red-haired ten-year-old girl sitting quietly in a high-backed chair by the lit fireplace, hadn't run off and broken something.

"Commissioner Gordon," Bruce said, walking up and shaking his hand. He smiled. "I looked up what your new job was called," he explained. "What brings you around?"

"Mr. Wayne," Gordon said, shaking his hand firmly. He bent down slightly and smiled warmly at Dick, who had, predictably, hidden behind Bruce's bulk. "Hello, son. It's nice to see you again."

"Hi," Dick said, brightening slightly at the familiar face.

Gordon straightened. "Barbara, come here, sweetheart. There's someone I want you to meet."

The girl hopped off the chair, leaving behind a cup of what looked like tea to match her father's, and walked over to them. "Hello, Mr. Wayne," she said politely, and shook Bruce's hand with a confidence that half of Bruce's business partners couldn't manage. "Barbara Gordon. It's nice to meet you."

"My pleasure," Bruce said, impressed. She was an intelligent child, then, and one used to dealing with adults rather than other children. "This is my ward, Richard Grayson."

"Hi," Dick repeated, waving shyly. "You can call me Dick."

"Hello, Dick," Barbara said.

There was an awkward silence for a moment, during which Barbara coolly eyed Dick, and Gordon and Bruce watched them.

Then Dick smiled. "You want to see the library?" he asked. "Bruce has got, like, a _million_ books. I bet he doesn't even know how many there are."

 _Good boy,_ Bruce thought, feeling an urge to nod in approval. Dick had seen the same thing Bruce had, and had gone straight for the intellect.

Barbara's demeanor warmed slightly, obviously intrigued. "A million?" she asked. "Really?"

"Uh huh," Dick said nodding. "We can count them, if you want."

"Daddy?" Barbara asked.

"Go on," Gordon said, giving permission, and the two kids were immediately off, Dick at a pace marginally below a run, following Bruce's rules to the letter if not in spirit. Barbara followed after just slowly enough to be respectable, but sped up as soon as she was out of the adults' sight.

Bruce glanced at Gordon and raised one eyebrow, although he knew from experience that it wasn't nearly as effective as Alfred's.

Gordon shrugged. "We're on our way out of town. I'm taking her to her mother's for Christmas. I thought …" He sighed. "It just seemed like maybe Dick should see another kid his age, every once in a while."

"He's starting at Gotham Academy, in January," Bruce said, a bit defensively. "There wasn't time this semester, with the placement exams, given his sporadic homeschooling with the circus—"

Gordon put his hands up. "I'm not criticizing," he said quickly. "I talked to his social worker. Apparently, you're doing a pretty good job, considering."

Bruce rolled his eyes. "Try not to sound so surprised, next time," he said.

Alfred returned, then, with a refill for Gordon—which he didn't need, as he hadn't drunk any of his tea to begin with—and a cup for Bruce, as well as an invitation to stay for dinner, which Gordon declined. They had to get on the road before it got dark, apparently, or Barbara's mother would have his hide. Instead, they made small talk for half an hour to give Dick and Barbara a chance to explore the library for a while.

It was a bizarre experience for Bruce, who hadn't had a conversation with Gordon that wasn't centered on crime, or the prevention thereof, in a long time. Inevitably, that's where they ended up.

"Has Dick spoken any more about the tampered rope?" Gordon asked, once they'd exhausted the weather, local sports, Barbara's school performance, the disaster that was city politics, their respective holiday plans, and the weather for a second time. "He seemed adamant that there was foul play involved, but nobody wants to launch a homicide investigation on the word of one child, not for out-of-towners nobody cares about in the first place."

Bruce swirled the remnants of his tea in the bottom of his mug, thinking.

"Bruce?" Gordon tried again.

It was the first time Gordon had used his given name in more than a decade. The last time that Bruce remembered had been at his high school graduation, to which Jim Gordon—a Lieutenant, then, and still periodically determined to check up on Bruce, because that was the kind of man he was—had come, shaking his hand afterward and telling him his parents would be proud of him.

"He's sure," Bruce said eventually. "But he's stopped saying anything. He knows as well as you do that nobody wants to listen to him."

Gordon leaned back in his chair. Bruce had eventually gotten him to sit, although it had taken some serious coaxing, and a promise that the chairs would not, in fact, break—and that Bruce could afford to replace them if they did. "Do _you_ believe him?"

Bruce put his cup down on the side table. "Isn't that part of the job?" he asked. "His parents were murdered in front of him, Jim. Of course I believe him."

Gordon huffed out something that might have been a laugh, and for the first time he actually relaxed a bit into the chair. "Yeah," he said. "You're doing okay."

/~*~/

When Gordon began making not-so-subtle noises about hitting the road, Bruce led him up to the library to fetch the kids—only they weren't _in_ the library, but rather in the hallway outside of it, apparently having decided to have a race. Of course, no doubt due to Dick's influence, they weren't running in the usual way, but doing so on their hands, upside-down.

"I do gymnastics, a little bit," Barbara explained, after rolling smoothly back onto her feet, slightly red-faced from blood flow or embarrassment, or both. "So Dick showed me how to walk on my hands."

Dick grinned, still in his handstand, as comfortable and balanced as he would be if he were sitting down. "She's got a knack for it! Can she come back to play again?" He finally flipped over, landing on the balls of his bare feet with a performer's flourish. Bruce wondered idly where his shoes had ended up, and immediately gave it up for a lost cause. Alfred would find them, somewhere, eventually. "I bet I could teach her to do all _sorts_ of fun stuff."

Jim Gordon gave Bruce a _look_ , and Bruce had a feeling it wouldn't be the last. _God help him,_ Bruce thought, not unkindly. A cop's only daughter, and a circus brat raised by Gotham's most infamous playboy. Gordon would have a heart attack before he hit fifty, if the job didn't kill him first.

Then again, this had been _his_ idea. Bruce was going to remind him of that in, oh, six or seven years.

"Some other time, maybe," Gordon said, a bit stiffly, and they started the long walk back to the front door.

As soon as they were gone, Dick turned to Bruce and asked, a bit worried, "Do you think he recognized me?"

Bruce had been a bit wary of that, too, given that Robin's small, glued-on domino mask didn't really do much to disguise his face—and Dick, of course, looked the same. In the end, though, the timing alone should protect them.

"Robin was in Gotham for the better part of a year before Richard Grayson ever arrived," Bruce reminded him, softly. "I don't think Gordon would question that."

Dick shook his head, as if trying to dispel a lingering headache. "Right. Sorry. Sometimes it still gets confusing."

He'd tried to explain it, in halting words one night when he'd felt more like Robin than Dick and sleep just wouldn't come. According to him, _most_ of the time he was Dick—as if he always had been, simple and easy. When he thought about being Robin, it was like recalling a book he'd read once, a long time ago, or a dream he'd had. He knew what happened, he remembered the characters and the events, but it didn't feel _real_. Not the way his life and his parents and the circus did, because those things had actually happened to him.

But then, sometimes, he'd wake up in the middle of the night and he couldn't hear the stars, and it _hurt._ In those moments he knew that being Robin, everything with Bruce and Alfred and everything he'd been before the binding, _had_ all been real. It was his mortal life—John and Mary Grayson, Haly's Circus, literally everything else he remembered, or thought he remembered—which was fake, grafted onto him by the ritual they'd performed.

"My entire life is a _lie_ ," he'd screamed at Bruce, one night, about three weeks after the ritual. He'd thrown things until his arm had given out, working his way through the trinkets and mementos that they'd salvaged from his parents' circus trailer and faithfully transported to his Manor bedroom. "None of it was real! _I_ _'_ _m_ not real! They weren't my parents! I never—I never even _spoke_ to them!"

Bruce had caught what he could, trying to make sure nothing broke, and otherwise had just let Dick's rage work itself out until he was crying in the center of the bed. At that point, Bruce had sat down next to him, pulled him into his lap, and rocked him back and forth.

"You're real," Bruce said. "You're real, Dick. They _were_ your parents. Otherwise it wouldn't hurt like it does."

There hadn't been anything as bad as that night, since, but sometimes Dick still switched back and forth from treating his Robin days as one of Bruce's bedtime stories, to forgetting that he hadn't lived in the Manor for almost a year instead of just six weeks. Hopefully that, too, would settle itself down, with time.

Bruce leaned over and nudged Dick slightly, in the shoulder. "Handstands, huh?" he asked, raising his eyebrows. "What happened to the books?"

Dick flushed a little. "She's _smart_ ," he said, at least half awestruck. "We started talking about school and I mentioned how I hadn't ever been before, and she said she could help me if it got too hard for me because she's done some tutoring for other kids. I told her I could maybe teach her some acrobatics so it wouldn't be just a one-way thing, but then she said she did some gymnastics already, and—"

Bruce half-listened, amused, as Dick prattled on, sounding more like himself than he had in a while.

That's when the doorbell rang for the second time.

Dick glanced down the hallway. "More guests?" he asked.

Bruce shrugged. "Want to go and check?"

/~*~/

Alfred, of course, beat them to the door—Dick had already expressed the opinion that Alfred must have possessed the same teleporting ability that Robin had—but he was still in the foyer greeting their guest when Bruce and Dick got there.

"Hello, boys," Dr. Leslie Thompkins said warmly, shrugging out of her coat and letting Alfred take it. "Alfred. A pleasure, as always."

Bruce stepped forward, and on an impulse, gave her a light kiss on one cheek. "Leslie," he said. "You remember Dick," he added, with the subtlest of emphasis.

As one of the few who knew about both Robin's true nature and Batman's civilian identity, she'd gotten a summarized explanation of what had happened; otherwise she'd have been extremely confused when the press release about Bruce Wayne taking custody of a circus orphan had broken. As far as she knew, Dick didn't remember being Robin, or at least not more than in the vaguest sense. It was just simpler, that way. They'd been reintroduced, when she had done his initial medical exam. She had, of course, agreed to make an exception and be Dick's primary doctor, much the same way she'd made an exception for Bruce for all these years.

"Hi, Dr. Thompkins," Dick said, suddenly shy again.

"Hello, Dick," Leslie said. "Are you keeping Bruce out of trouble?"

Dick smiled. "Yes, ma'am. Much as I can."

"Good boy," she told him. "Now, I can't stay long, but I wanted to drop by before my shift at the clinic." She reached back over to the coat that Alfred was folding over his arm, and dug around in a pocket until she produced a small package, which she handed to Dick. "Here, for you. Merry Christmas."

Dick glanced at Bruce, who nodded for him to open it.

As Dick began plucking carefully at the red and silver wrapping paper, Leslie reached into her purse and handed an envelope to Bruce. "You've never asked," she told him, quietly. "I thought you would, but you never did."

Bruce, intrigued, broke the seal and slid out a sheet of paper. It was a list of names with paired addresses or phone numbers, occasionally both, sometimes just a second name listed as a point of contact. For a moment his eyes tracked over it without understanding it, and then one name caught his eye—a low-level enforcer for the Penguin, who had slipped an arrest warrant and was currently considered a fugitive—and the rest of the list fell into place. They were persons of interest in various criminal cases, and Leslie either knew where they were or how to get to them, because of her clinic work.

Bruce was already shaking his head, handing her the envelope back. "Leslie, no," he said. "Your patients trust you. If you jeopardize that—"

"I didn't say to expect this all the time." Leslie pushed the list back toward him. "Merry Christmas, Bruce," she said, firmly. "Now say, 'Thank you, Leslie,' and see what your boy got."

Bruce hesitated.

She crossed her arms.

"Thank you, Leslie," Bruce said, and pocketed the list.

"Hey, cool!" Dick said, and held up his present, which was a common desk toy: a pendulum set of five metal balls. Bruce recalled that Leslie's temporary desk, the one she borrowed at the private practice uptown where she met Bruce for his regular appointments rather than at her emergency clinic, had one just like it. Dick had been fascinated, never having seen one before, and had played with it almost the entire time they'd been in the room during his appointment. "Thanks, doc!"

"You're welcome," Leslie said sincerely.

/~*~/

Despite protesting that she was needed at her clinic, Leslie stayed for nearly an hour, until Alfred started making noises about serving dinner and she fled, pleading angry volunteer nurses on Christmas Eve. Bruce walked her out to her car, ignoring her good-natured griping about not being an old woman; the Manor drive was icy, and it got dark early, this time of year.

Dick had been relatively cool toward the whole idea of Christmas, up until now, but perhaps opening one present had somehow unlatched the floodgates on his excitement, because he was starting to get antsy. He fidgeted with his new desk toy until Bruce thought the sound of little clacking metal balls would drive him mad. Bruce turned on the television and found some inane animated holiday special as a distraction, but it didn't seem to help much.

It was almost a relief when the doorbell rang again, even if Alfred would be irate, in his typically reserved way, at having to delay dinner.

In his growing state of excitement, Dick actually beat everybody to the door this time. He opened it, smiling, only to step back a bit when he saw who it was. "Hello," he said, sounding a bit uncertain.

Bruce walked up and peered around the frame to find Selina on the stoop, bundled up against the chill but braving the icy drive in boots with four-inch stiletto heels. She was carrying a wine bottle in one arm, and a small purse in the other, looking equally ready to attend a charity gala on Bruce's arm or rob him blind. Possibly both at once; there was never any telling, with her.

"Well?" she asked, and shivered, although it was probably for show, given her impressive fur coat. "Do I get to come inside?"

"Yes, of course," Bruce said, and stepped aside.

Alfred appeared once they were all in the foyer, taking Selina's coat and the wine bottle with a gracious, "Miss Kyle. Dinner will be ready in fifteen minutes, if you'd like to stay."

" _Thank_ you, Alfred," Selina said pointedly. "That would be lovely."

They relocated to the same parlor where Bruce had entertained Gordon earlier in the day to wait as Alfred put the finishing touches on the meal, Dick following along behind Bruce and Selina like an awkward puppy, unsure of his welcome. This was precisely the reason Bruce hadn't invited Selina over, since Dick's arrival. Even without the complication of Robin's relationship with her, pre-transformation, Bruce wasn't sure that his not-entirely-healthy romantic entanglement with a woman who flirted with the line between villain and antihero was something he should expose his preteen ward to on a regular basis, not if he wanted to keep social services happy.

Then again, if Dick's social worker ever found out about the secret elevator and the Cave below, Bruce was pretty sure his chances of keeping custody of Dick were zero anyway, regardless of who he was or wasn't involved with romantically. It wasn't like everyone in Gotham wasn't aware of his personal habits—they called him the Playboy Prince of Gotham for a reason—and the rumor mill would have him sleeping with Selina Kyle whether he actually was or not, simply because that's what Bruce Wayne did. If it wasn't Selina Kyle, it would be some other socialite, and it wasn't like anybody _knew_ she was Catwoman.

That sounded suspiciously like a rationalization.

"Bruce?"

Bruce blinked, startled out of this thoughts. Selina was holding out a wine glass for him, which Alfred must have brought back from the kitchen and filled. "Sorry," he said, and took it.

"Should I go upstairs?" Dick asked, very quietly, kicking his feet against the carpet with downcast eyes.

"No," Bruce said quickly. "No, Dick. Of course not."

Selina softened, as if she understood suddenly what the problem was. "I don't believe we've been properly introduced," she said, turning to Dick with smooth grace. Then she paused. "Unless … _Do_ you remember me?"

Dick shrugged, holding up a hand and tilting it side to side. "Kind of. Some things are a little fuzzy. It's like a dream that I had, most of the time."

"Well, then," Selina said, and grinned at him. Bruce felt a shiver go down his spine at the sight, because it was very much a _Robin_ sort of grin, a promise of danger and mischief and fun in about equal proportions. "I'm Selina. It's nice to meet you."

Dick shook her hand. "Dick Grayson," he said, and smiled back. "You're good at hide and seek, aren't you?"

She laughed, full and rolling. "We'll play, after dinner," she promised, and they did.

If Selina offered to go first, so that Dick could run off and hide and she and Bruce could be alone in the sitting room for a very _slow_ count to one hundred, well—it was a big house. Dick wouldn't question that it had taken Selina some time to track him down.

Still, Bruce didn't let it go as far as he might have, two months ago, and it wasn't the thought of Alfred's disapproval at having to clean the couch that stopped him. "Dick comes first," he said, pushing her hair back from her face. "He's human, now. More or less."

"Fine," Selina said. She sat up a bit, adjusting her dress, giving no more complaint than a very small pout and a sigh. "Got it. The kid comes first."

And with that, she'd gone to look for him.

Later, Selina kissed Bruce goodbye at the Manor door, like they were teenagers on a first date, and whispered in his ear, "Call me sometime, when he's at school."

Then she'd ruffled Dick's hair, making him laugh and duck out of her reach and pat furiously at it, trying to fix the damage without much success. She told them to have a Merry Christmas, and then glided out much the same way she'd arrived, in a waft of subtle perfume and elegant furs and retracted, but never blunted, claws.

"Um, Bruce?" Dick asked, sounding confused. "Did she just steal your wallet?"

"Yes, she did," Bruce said as he watched her walk to her car. He didn't check his pockets; he didn't need to. "Call it her Christmas present, if you like."

Not that Bruce would have wanted her any other way.

/~*~/

At some point during the long evening, even with all the distractions, Dick had noticed the giant pile of presents that had appeared under the Christmas tree. Bruce would have been disappointed in him if he hadn't; just because his Robin days seemed like a dream, most of the time, didn't mean that Dick had forgotten the lessons Bruce had taught him, and it would have taken abysmal observational skills and environmental awareness to miss them, given the sheer number of presents there were.

What Dick hadn't realized, either because it simply hadn't occurred to him or because he hadn't thought to read the tags, was that they were all for _him_.

"Wait, Bruce, are you serious?" he asked, when Bruce asked him if he'd like to pick one, or a few, to open tonight instead of waiting until Christmas morning. "They're all for _me_?"

Bruce shrugged, a little self-deprecatingly. "Who did you think they were for?" he asked.

Dick goggled at him. "I don't know, you?" he asked. "Don't people give you things?"

Honestly, they did, but not usually the sorts of things that ended up wrapped in colorful paper below a tree in the Manor living room. Bruce had entire boxes of fine crystal decanters and glassware sets, dressers full of expensive watches, drawers of diamond and ivory cufflinks, cellars full of fine wines and imported alcohol from all over the world—the sorts of things that he could have bought for himself, if he'd ever wanted them, all the trappings of growing up the Prince of Gotham that he'd never really noticed and therefore didn't particularly appreciate.

Last year one of his assistants, embarrassed nearly to death, had handed him a hand-drawn Christmas card one of her children had made for him. She'd stood there before his desk like she was waiting for the firing squad, explaining that her six-year-old daughter had made her promise that she would give it to Mr. Wayne, and she was very sorry, could he please just take it? It was ugly by any measure, a crayon creation in gaudy red and green with Merry Christmas misspelled in letters that started off too big and trailed off to much smaller print as it arced across the card. Bruce had taken it with good grace, thanked her for it, and placed it in his desk. He still had it, faithfully preserved in a manila folder to protect it, just to remind himself that sometimes it was the things that cost the least, and came from unexpected quarters, that did the most good.

But it had been a long time since anyone but Alfred had given him a present—a real one—that he'd cared about, or looked forward to opening. It may have sounded cheesy, even inside Bruce's head, but that didn't make the sentiment any less sincere: Dick's presence in the Manor was gift enough, this year. There had certainly been a steep enough price paid for it, even if the bill had come due at John and Mary Grayson's door instead of his own.

"Sometimes," Bruce said, and left it at that. "A lot of them are at corporate parties and charity events, though—and I skipped those, this year."

Dick was still staring, open-mouthed, at the pyramid of presents. "But—gosh, Bruce, _really?_ Did you leave anything in the stores for the rest of the kids in Gotham?"

Bruce smiled. "It's your first Christmas here," he said. "Indulge me."

Dick turned, staring at him now.

"We can donate whatever you don't want," Bruce said, attempting to placate him. "Okay?"

Dick hesitated, obviously still caught somewhere between mounting excitement and lingering guilt. Bruce didn't think all of it was just about the money Bruce had spent, either, or having so many presents when he knew intellectually that there were a lot of kids in Gotham with less, or none at all. Dick was a precocious nine-year-old, but he was still a kid, and that shouldn't have bothered him for long. No, Bruce thought it was more the fear of being happy at all, of truly enjoying something—of _letting_ himself enjoy something—especially a family holiday, when his parents were so recently dead.

"What would they have wanted, for you?" Bruce said, quietly. "To be sad and miserable, because missing them was more important than living your life? Or would they want you to be happy, if you could?"

Dick glanced at him, and then made a sound that was half a laugh, and half a sob. "Can't I be both?" he asked.

"Of course," Bruce said.

Dick wiped at his eyes with the back of one hand, sniffing once. He pointed at one large box, the cornerstone of the pyramid. "That one," he said, probably just to make Bruce rearrange the rest of the presents.

It took nearly five minutes of careful present-shifting to extract the box in question from the pile without destabilizing the rest of Alfred's artful, structurally-sound arrangement and jeopardizing not just some of the more delicate presents but the tree itself and its fragile ornaments and lights. Bruce didn't mind, though; the wasted time gave Dick a chance to collect his emotions. Sure enough, by the time Bruce finally got the box out and lifted it triumphantly, Dick was jumping in place in front of the couch and holding his hands out, eager, his guilt and grief forgotten, at least for now.

Unfortunately for Dick's patience, the present had been selected as the cornerstone because it was large and stable, being one of the video gaming system consoles that several people had assured Bruce that every child wanted this year. Dick, who had grown up with either a small portable television in his parents' circus trailer that only periodically caught over-the-air cable when they were in a city, or else—as Robin—without a television at all, had never before owned a gaming system. Neither had Bruce, although he understood the basic concept; one cord to the wall for power, one cord to the television for picture and sound, one cord to the controller for game inputs—how hard could it be?

Half an hour later they were still struggling to get it set up correctly. Or, rather, Bruce was struggling to get the console set up while Dick crawled through the present pyramid looking for game-shaped boxes to unwrap so that they could test it out, if Bruce ever got the welcome screen to show on the television.

It was around that point that Bruce attempted to tilt the console box, trying to see if the cord had somehow come unplugged on the back side. It hadn't—and he could tell, because it pulled taut, snagging the corner of the television, which slid about an inch across the hardwood entertainment-center stand and smacked him in the forehead where he was leaning over, trying to see.

"Son of a—!"

"Um," a voice said from the hall. "Is this a bad time?"

Bruce turned, one hand pressed against the spot on his forehead, which was probably going to turn pink but not bruise. Clark was standing in the entrance, dressed in civilian clothes—long winter coat and a short-brimmed hat, a little old-fashioned even by the weird film-noir fashion standards they were fond of in Metropolis. _Overcompensating again_ , Bruce thought clinically, and wondered if Clark would be more comfortable in Kansas farm-boy flannel and denim, but felt like he had to blend in with the big-city folk.

"Of course not," Alfred said from next to him, when it became clear that Bruce wasn't going to respond, at least not timely enough for Alfred's courtesy standards. "Let me take your coat, sir."

Clark jumped a little, blushing and stammering a bit the way he always did whenever Alfred waited on him. "Oh, uh, thanks, Alfred." He shrugged out of his coat, then handed it gingerly over, as if afraid that its bulk would topple Alfred's spindly frame.

Bruce could have told him not to worry; Alfred had always been sturdier than he looked.

"Coffee, Mr. Kent?" Alfred asked.

"Um, no, thank you," Clark said. He swiped off his hat, handing it to Alfred guiltily, like maybe he thought it had been rude to leave it on in the house. He pushed nervously at the big, square glasses that he used as a disguise, bouncing them off the bridge of his nose so that they fell right back down where they were before he'd touched them. "I'll just be a moment."

"As you wish, sir," Alfred said, and left.

Bruce glanced back up from the television to find Clark watching him, clearly waiting for him to set the tone of their interaction. It wasn't the first time they'd been face to face since their fight in the church; Clark had eventually returned Bruce's phone call, and Bruce had gone to Metropolis, as promised, to apologize in person. That meeting had been chilly—not that Bruce had expected any better—and Bruce hadn't stayed long. He'd explained what he could, made his apologies, and left the door open for Clark to ask for his help whenever it was needed. Other than that, well—he'd left things, more or less, in Clark's hands. That was only fair, given that Clark had been the one who was hurt.

"I assume this isn't a business call," Bruce said quietly, looking back down at the television. "Or you'd be in your work clothes."

Clark glanced down at his sweater-covered chest, briefly confused, before seeming to understand what Bruce was obliquely referring to. "Oh," he said after a moment. "Well, it is, actually."

Bruce straightened, feeling his stomach sinking as he did so. He'd had plans, for tonight, and he didn't want to cancel them—but if Clark was willing to rebuild the bridge that Bruce had lit on fire over the Bane incident, Bruce couldn't walk away from that opportunity. He might not get another one. "Is it an emergency?" He gestured toward the back of the Manor, where the secret elevator was hidden. "We can go downstairs—"

"No," Clark said, shaking his head. "It's not." He shifted his weight from foot to foot, uncomfortable. "I just wanted to talk to you about something."

Bruce glanced over at Dick, who was still searching through the present pile for video games, as if he hadn't even noticed Clark's arrival. That was another reintroduction they would have to do, at some point, depending on how much _Robin_ there was in Dick, today. Given the excitement of Christmas and the recent wash of grief over his parents, Bruce thought he was much closer to Richard Grayson, right now. Better not to crack the wall between them, not for another few hours, anyway.

Bruce turned back to Clark. "Help me get this thing working," he offered, tapping the game console in annoyance, "and then we can talk."

/~*~/

Once Dick was happily installed on the couch with his game controller, guiding a blue hedgehog around collecting golden rings, Bruce led Clark up to his father's study and pulled the door almost closed, leaving it cracked so that he could hear, in case Dick called for him. Bruce was halfway through pouring himself two fingers of whiskey from the liquor cabinet—he needed it, after wrestling with the game console for forty-five minutes—when he remembered that Clark was behind him, and pulled out a second glass.

"Oh, no, I—"

"Just take it," Bruce said, rolling his eyes. "You don't have to drink it, if you don't want to."

Clark winced, as if afraid the fine crystal was going to explode in his large hands, but he took the glass when Bruce handed it over without complaint. He even tasted it, after an experimental sniff, although from the look on his face he didn't quite appreciate the appeal.

 _Farm-boy_ , Bruce thought again, but the tone was more fond than judgmental. He turned to prop one hip up against the side of his father's desk, only then seeing a small box sitting in the center of the desk chair, where it wouldn't be immediately visible from the doorway—barring x-ray vision of course. Alfred must have known that Bruce would bring Clark here, and had fetched it, knowing that Bruce had intended to give it to him.

Bruce leaned over and picked it up. It was heavy, given its size, because the box was lead-lined. "Here," he said, holding it out in Clark's direction. "Merry Christmas," he added, dryly.

Clark frowned slightly, then set his whiskey glass aside on a bookshelf—although not, Bruce noticed, without locating a coaster first. "Bruce, you didn't have to," he said, a little uncomfortably.

"I really did," Bruce said, quietly, still holding out the box.

Clark took it, sighed, and cracked it open—revealing a sliver of green light—and immediately slammed it, viciously, closed. His hands were trembling, and he closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again. "You should have warned me," he said, harshly.

"It was lead-lined," Bruce said, a bit defensively. "What did you _think_ it was?"

"Your idea of trying to wrap a Christmas present for me," Clark said, shaking his head.

Bruce started to open his mouth, paused, and closed it. "Okay, that's fair," he admitted. "I was going to give it to you the next time I saw you. I didn't know it was going to be Christmas Eve."

"You said 'Merry Christmas.'"

"It was ironic."

Clark stared at him. "That's not the—No, you know what? This is stupid. We're not arguing about this." He took a deep breath. "Why give it to me?"

Bruce walked behind his father's desk and sat heavily down into the large leather chair, sliding it back far enough to stretch his legs out. It was a more relaxed posture than he would normally adopt—even in private, let alone with another person in the room—but if he was going to try for non-threatening then he was going to do it _properly_. He balanced the whiskey glass on the arm of the chair, with a mental apology to his father's ghost. "It's yours," he said. "Literally, I think. It's a piece of your planet, isn't it?"

"That's not good enough," Clark said. As if in direct contrast to Bruce, he was standing perfectly upright, almost rigid. "It's a weapon, and you're not the kind of man to give one of those away for sentimental reasons."

"It's dangerous," Bruce said, and he found that he couldn't meet Clark's eyes when he said it—because he wasn't talking about the green rock inside the box in Clark's hands, and they both knew it. _I_ _'_ _m dangerous._ He stared at his whiskey instead. "You should throw it into the Sun with the rest of them."

In his peripheral vision, Bruce could see Clark's hands tense on the box. For a moment, Bruce thought he would crush it, or else take it and fly off right then and there, civilian clothes or not. Then, very deliberately, Clark released his hold on the box and set it aside on the bookshelf, next to his abandoned whiskey.

"Tell me why," he said instead.

"What?" Bruce asked, momentarily thrown.

"Why," Clark repeated, and it was still a command, rather than a question.

Bruce bristled at that tone, unused to hearing such authority directed toward him, and he responded before he thought better of it. "I don't recall agreeing to an interview, Mr. Kent," he said, and it came out acidic.

"I thought I was asking my friend a question," Clark said, and never mind that it hadn't sounded in the least like one.

Bruce turned his glass in his fingers, once, twice, watching the amber liquid rock back and forth. _Friend,_ he thought, and marveled that Clark could still use that word, after what had happened. "I could have killed you," he said eventually, still not daring to meet Clark's eyes.

"But you didn't."

"I could have," Bruce insisted. "If Dick hadn't been there—" No, that wasn't quite right. "If Robin hadn't talked me—"

"Bruce," Clark said.

Bruce stopped.

"Why," Clark said, one more time.

Bruce closed his eyes. "It's too much power," he said, and he sighed, remembering Robin in the cemetery by his parents' graves. "It's too much power for one man to have, unchecked. Even me." Then he laughed, bitter, and added, " _Especially_ me."

When Bruce opened his eyes a moment later, daring to glance up, he found Clark watching him with an odd look on his face, as if Clark was measuring him differently, or seeing something about him, or _in_ him, that he hadn't before.

"Is that why you kept it in the first place?" Clark asked, and his booming voice was oddly soft, in that moment.

"I like contingency plans," Bruce muttered, under his breath. Not that it did any good, in a room with someone who had hearing as good as Clark's. "Look, I'm sorry, all right? Just take it, and destroy it, and we'll pretend it never happened."

"No," Clark said slowly. "I think …" He paused, and there was a slight tremor in his hands that he took a moment to control. "I don't like it, but you may be right. Without that Kryptonite, nobody on this planet could stop me, if I ever crossed a line. Maybe somebody should keep one, just in case."

Bruce stared at him, uncomprehending for a moment. "That's dangerous, Clark," he said quietly. "If it got into the wrong hands …"

"I know," Clark said. "Better than anyone, I _know_."

Bruce swallowed, pretending for a moment that it didn't hurt. "Okay, then," he said. "Take it, give it to somebody safe. Your mother, maybe. Tell her to hide it somewhere only she knows. Then, if it's ever needed—"

Clark was already shaking his head. "That's too much to ask. It puts her in too much danger. If somebody found out she had it …" He trailed off, staring at the box on the bookshelf. "You keep it," he added, after a moment.

Bruce went still. "You don't mean that," he said quietly. "You should give it to someone you trust."

"I am," Clark said.

"No," Bruce said, getting angry now, without quite understanding why. "You have no reason to trust me, after what I did."

"That's exactly why I do," Clark said, firm and simple. "I have other friends, other people that I could trust with my life—but I'd be trusting them _not_ to use it against me. You're the only one that I trust will, if it comes to that."

Bruce wished, briefly, that those words felt like a compliment. They didn't.

"Are you sure?" Bruce asked, very quietly. "Because if you give that back to me—Clark, I _will_ carry it with me. Everywhere. Just in case. That's—that's who I am. And I won't be stupid enough to offer it to you again." He finally met Clark's eyes. "Be sure," he said.

"I am," Clark repeated, sounding a little surprised at himself. He did hesitate briefly, as he reached for the little box, but he eventually picked it up and set it down on the desk in front of Bruce.

Bruce didn't say anything, just drank his whiskey and kept to his carefully non-threatening posture. Bad enough that Clark was literally handing him a weapon that could kill him; the least he could do was not instantly reach for it, as if he needed it, as if the vast power differential between them left him feeling vulnerable and exposed. _Especially_ right now, when he was still recovering from the loss of the binding's enhancements—not that the extra speed or agility or even strength would have made much of a difference in the first place, not against Clark.

"You said you had something you wanted to discuss?" Bruce prompted, instead of thinking about it any longer.

Clark sighed, looking for a moment like he wanted to roll his eyes, and leaned up against the bookshelf. Bruce noticed that he didn't really rest any of his weight on it, though; he was actually leaning carefully on the air a millimeter away from it, using his flight powers to make it just look like he was leaning on it, probably afraid that his weight or his super-strength would crush it. Keeping up appearances, pretending to be human, even now. Bruce didn't know if that was sad, or not.

"I just wanted you to come to a meeting with me," Clark said, without any preamble.

"What kind of meeting?" Bruce asked, immediately suspicious.

"Don't play dumb, Bruce," Clark said, shaking his head at him. "I know you've been tracking the rumors on that monstrosity you call a computer downstairs. Over the last six months the numbers of vigilantes and costumed heroes have increased exponentially."

Bruce had a bad feeling about this. "Idiots running around in gym clothes with a death wish aren't my problem," he said.

"Not all of them are playing," Clark insisted. "Some of them are the real deal. There's a kid in the Midwest who's faster than I am, for instance. Only on the ground, but still."

Bruce narrowed his eyes. "What does that have to do with me?"

"Nothing, if you don't want it to," Clark admitted. "But I've done a little bit of reaching out, here and there—the speedster, a warrior from a lost culture—well, there are two of those, actually, although one was raised here like I was—a fighter pilot who got his hands on some alien tech, an _actual_ alien, an archer of all things—you'd like him; I think his only superpowers are a trust fund and a thick skull. Maybe a couple of others, if you can help me track them down. I want you to meet them."

Bruce's eyes got narrower still. "Why?" he asked.

Clark shrugged his massive shoulders without disturbing his overly-casual lean. "Because they want to meet you?"

"Why?" Bruce repeated.

"Gotham has a reputation, like it or not," Clark told him. "And that means so do you. They'll take this more seriously if you're a part of it."

Bruce huffed out a laugh. "What, are you starting a book club?"

"Maybe," Clark said. "Something like that, anyway."

Bruce blinked. "Wait, you're being serious."

"I am."

"You …" Bruce sat up in his chair, folding his legs underneath the desk. "You're starting some kind of super-secret superhero book club?"

Clark winced. "Can you rephrase that in a way that doesn't make me sound twelve years old? Or eighty-five? I can't decide which is worse."

Bruce put his whiskey down on the desk and fought the urge to put his hands over his face. "You want me to join your Super-Secret Superhero Book Club," he said flatly.

Clark sighed. "We are calling it _something else_ ," he insisted.

Bruce crossed his arms. "I'm not going," he said flatly.

Clark looked thoughtful for a moment. "Did I mention one of them's a princess?"

Bruce did go, of course, and they did end up calling it something else, although that didn't stop Bruce from sarcastically referring to it as "Clark's little book club" for years afterward, whenever they did something Bruce thought was particularly stupid.

Although, to be fair, calling themselves _The Justice League_ still made them sound twelve years old, in Bruce's opinion.

/~*~/

By the time Bruce made it back to the living room after showing Clark out, it was probably well past what should have been Dick's bedtime, if he'd been a remotely normal nine-year-old—especially given that it was Christmas Eve, and Dick's excitable nature meant that he'd almost certainly be waking Bruce at dawn, which wasn't something either of them were accustomed to given their normal schedules. Then again, Bruce had made plans for tonight, and despite the succession of interruptions and unexpected guests—he couldn't remember the last time he'd had so many people in the Manor on the same day for unrelated reasons, let alone at Christmas—he didn't want to postpone them.

Dick deserved better.

"Come on, lad," Bruce said, collecting Dick from the couch. "I've got something to show you."

It wasn't the first time Dick had been down to the Cave, of course. His memories of his Robin days were a bit hazy, but he knew Bruce's big secret already, and there was no point in pretending that he didn't. Alfred didn't necessarily approve of Dick staying up late enough to wait for Bruce to get back from patrol, but given that Dick had trouble sleeping even on a good day, his protests were half-hearted at best. Not every night, but not rare enough to be uncommon, Dick would find his way down the secret elevator to crawl into the computer chair with a blanket, so that he would be there to greet Bruce with a tired smile at the end of the night.

As such, there had really been no way to hide the refurbishing project Bruce and Alfred had been working on for the last four weeks, and Dick must have noticed it. There had been a large tarp strung across a previously-unoccupied corner near the training area, in an attempt to shield the specifics, but Dick could have easily slipped through it if he'd ever been curious enough to go looking. They'd brought the parts and tools inside in crates and boxes, and Alfred and Bruce had been careful to do the work while Dick was either asleep or otherwise occupied—but Bruce had a feeling Dick knew what it was, anyway.

Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the surprise wasn't the point. Maybe Dick hadn't even gone looking, because he didn't _want_ to know, because this was something he couldn't face again right now.

"For you," Bruce said, when the elevator opened, and Dick could see the new training area for the first time. "If you're ready. When you're ready."

The training area was more than twice the size it had been six weeks ago. In addition to the more standard gym equipment, weights, and fighting dummies that Bruce had always used, there was now an acrobatics course, complete with ropes and nets—after what Dick had seen, Bruce would put a net under him at all times, until Dick expressly told him not to, and maybe even afterward—and gymnastics equipment, all sized down for Dick's nine-year-old body: parallel bars, rings, a vaulting horse, mats, trampolines … anything and everything that Bruce and Alfred could think of, between them.

"I don't know what all you had, back in the circus," Bruce started. "If there's anything missing—"

"Bruce?" Dick said, his voice trembling a little.

Bruce looked down, shocked to see that Dick was openly crying, the way he never did unless he was coming out of a nightmare or a bout of intense grief, too proud or too stubborn the rest of the time to show such uninhibited weakness, even to Bruce.

"Does this mean …?" Dick took a breath, as if to steady himself. "Do you want …?" He trailed off, biting his bottom lip, as if he was afraid to speak the words.

"Dick?" Bruce prompted.

The boy squared his shoulders, as if lining up for inspection. "Can I be Robin again?" he asked, very quietly.

Bruce immediately knelt, and put a hand on Dick's shoulder. "Robin is already a part of you," he said, firmly. "That has nothing to do with me."

Dick shook his head. "You named me," he whispered.

 _Most fathers do,_ Bruce thought, but didn't say it out loud. "Is that what you want?" he asked.

"It's who I am," Dick said. "My parents taught me to fly, Bruce, but _you_ gave me the sky, and the rooftops, and the stars. I—I miss it."

"It'll be different," Bruce warned him. That was something Bruce himself had learned, brutally, the first time he'd gone out in the armor after the ritual, but at least he had years of training to fall back on, memories of fights and patrols before the binding had changed his physical limitations. Dick would have to learn from scratch. "You're human, Dick. Slower, weaker, less agile. You can't punch a grown man and knock him out, now."

"I know," Dick said, still standing straight and tall, a little toy soldier in front of a commanding officer. "I'll have to fight differently—smarter. Distract, annoy, trap. Use the environment, and never get caught in a hold by a stronger opponent."

Bruce blinked. "You've thought about this."

Dick took a steadying breath. "Since I got here," he whispered. "Bruce, _please._ "

Bruce hadn't been sure, until that moment. He hadn't even wanted to hope—had told himself that he shouldn't, that Dick would be happier as a normal child, without the darkness that clung to Bruce's obsessive mission like a persistent fog—but somewhere, deep down, he'd known. Dick had seen too much, been through too much, to turn back now. He was _Robin_ , down in his bones, and there was no walking away from the mission once it had its hooks in you.

"You'll have to train," Bruce told him. "Harder than before. It'll be weeks, maybe months, before you're ready for a real patrol."

Dick nodded. "I know. I'll do it. Whatever it takes."

Bruce should have told him _No_. He knew that. No child should be exposed to this kind of violence, to the danger and the darkness and the evil that waited out on Gotham's streets. Dick wasn't old enough to make this decision, and Bruce was taking advantage of the boy's grief and vulnerability, his loneliness and his desire to please Bruce. Dick was _nine years old_. Bruce was supposed to be protecting him, helping him heal, not forging him into a weapon for the sake of his own crusade. It was every argument Gordon had ever made, every talking head on television, every whisper of morality that waited patiently in the bottom of Bruce's own heart, begging him just this once to be the better man.

Bruce got to his feet. "You'll need this, then," he said, and turned for the case that held the armor. When it opened, there was a new compartment, and sitting next to his own suit, in all its imposing black bulk, was a smaller, lighter ensemble in bright red, green, and yellow—because Bruce hadn't hoped, hadn't let himself hope, but he had _known._

"Oh," Dick gasped, eyes widening. "You … You were waiting for me to ask?"

"It had to be your decision," Bruce said, because even if he couldn't be the better man, he was that good, at least. "I didn't want to influ—"

That was as far as he got before Dick was hugging him, and his arms might have been slender but they were strong, a gymnast's arms, squeezing the breath out of him.

"Thank you," Dick whispered, like he'd just been handed a miracle.

Bruce swallowed. "Try it on," he said, a bit gruffer than he'd intended. "Then I have something to show you."

"Wait, something _else_?"

/~*~/

"That's him?" Dick asked, an hour later, as they were crouched side-by-side on the roof of a convenience store in the slum known colloquially as Crime Alley. They were peering over the concrete lip of the building's edge, down into the second-story apartment next door, where a man was puttering around in his dimly-lit kitchen as the television played a holiday special behind him, casting ever-shifting colorful shadows on the walls. "That's _really_ him. You're sure?"

Bruce didn't move from his crouch, steady as a statue. "You read my investigation file yourself," he said, instead of a straight answer. "What do you think?"

Dick chewed on his bottom lip, turning it as blood-red as the pieces of his costume. Around them, midnight struck, and Christmas Eve ticked over into Christmas morning. "That's him," Dick said, sounding more sure of himself. "That's the man who killed my parents."

Tony Zucco. Known enforcer for the Maroni family. Who had been seen by three different people attempting—and failing—to extort protection money from Mr. Haly, two days prior to the fatal fall of his main attraction, the Flying Graysons. It was the sort of case that Bruce could close in his sleep, once he had all the facts. The trouble had been getting the circus folk to talk to outsiders, before they'd left town, finding any witnesses at all once they had, and finding a way into Maroni's circle to confirm it on that end. Six weeks, but he'd gotten a name. Tony Zucco.

"That's the man who killed my parents," Dick repeated, in a different tone of voice, as if suddenly realizing what that meant. "He sabotaged their line. He made them _fall._ "

Bruce remained perfectly still, watching and waiting. This time he didn't know, but he _hoped._ "What do you want to do?" he asked.

Dick turned to him, almost vibrating with emotions too strong to contain in his small frame. "Is there enough evidence?" he asked, his voice tight, because he'd read the file, and he remembered Robin's lessons, and he already knew the answer. "Is there enough evidence to take to Gordon?"

Bruce still didn't move. "Not for your parents," he said, and it broke his heart to say it, to see the way the words hit Dick like a blow to the face. "We'd have to take him down for something else."

The white lenses of Dick's domino mask no longer blinked shut when his eyes closed, now that they were real and not a glamour, but Bruce could tell that he'd screwed his eyes tightly shut anyway, probably against tears. "That isn't _fair_ ," he said.

"No," Bruce said. "It isn't."

"He killed them," Dick said, and his small shoulders were shaking under the Kevlar and the cape attachments. "He killed them, Bruce."

Bruce was motionless. He didn't even reprimand the boy for using his name in the field. "What do you want to do?" he repeated.

Dick made a sound then, something like a laugh, but bitter and angry and desperate. "Is this—is this a _test_?" he demanded, outraged. "After _everything_ , you still think _—_ " Dick broke off, angry and hurt. "He killed my parents," he hissed. "He _killed_ them. He should pay for it."

"He should," Bruce agreed, quiet. "What do you want to do?" he asked a third time.

Dick was crying, again. Bruce could see the tears leaking out from under the mask, threatening to break the seal on the adhesive that glued the material to his golden skin. "I want to be _Robin_ ," Dick said, and it sounded like something was breaking inside him as he said it. Bruce wondered which part of being Robin he wanted most, in that moment—the simple worldview, the uncomplicated desires, or the power to kill a grown man with his bare hands.

Then, finally, Bruce moved, putting a gauntleted hand on Dick's bony shoulder. "You _are_ Robin," he told him. "So make the choice that Robin would make." Then he asked the question one more time. "What do you want to do?"

Dick wiped at his cheeks with his green-gloved fists, straightened his posture while remaining in his crouch, and took a steadying breath. "I want to get him arrested for every single horrible thing he's ever done that we can possibly get to stick."

Bruce squeezed his shoulder. "Then we have some work to do."

Dick looked up at him, and smiled, trembling and uncertain. "I thought I wasn't ready?" he asked.

"You're not," Bruce said, without any softness or apology in his voice at all.

Dick's face fell slightly. "But …"

"But he killed your parents," Bruce said. "I didn't want to do it without you."

Dick nodded, because he knew that Bruce would understand, in only the way that someone else who has been through the same trauma can. "I want to see his face," he whispered. "I want to look in his eyes."

"You can put the cuffs on him yourself," Bruce told him.

Dick grinned at that, and for the first time in six weeks, he was _Robin_ , through and through _._ "Promise?" he asked, all teeth and threat.

"I promise," Bruce said.

/~*~/

When Jim Gordon woke up on Christmas morning, he found a trussed-up Tony Zucco on his doorstep, complete with a jaunty bow stuck to his matted hair. Pinned to his chest was a file with enough collected evidence to put him away for twenty years. It wasn't enough for the pain he had caused, would _never_ be enough, but this was Gotham; sometimes, good enough was all you got, and you took it, grateful that fate had seen fit to hand you anything at all.

By then, Bruce and Dick were long gone. They hadn't stayed out until dawn, that night. They couldn't now; neither of them were capable of running that long, that hard, without wearing out, not unless it was an emergency. They didn't play tag across the rooftops, jumping from ledges to gargoyles without a grapple or a safety line, because they couldn't be sure of their footing, and because Dick had watched his parents fall to their deaths just six weeks earlier. He wouldn't let that take the exhilaration of flying from him, not permanently, not even for very long—but the wound was raw and open, still, and he hesitated before he stepped off a roof, for now.

They didn't sit on a skyscraper and watch the sun come up, or lie back on an apartment complex roof and listen to the starsongs, because Bruce couldn't see the subtle color differences anymore, and Dick couldn't hear the stars.

But the _mission_ hadn't changed, even if they had. That was enough.

There would be another night, months later, that was technically Dick's first outing as Robin, once Bruce was convinced that he'd relearned enough combat skills not to immediately get himself killed on the streets. But when asked, in later years, Bruce always pointed to that Christmas morning as the start of things, as the moment that it all began. That was the true start of their career, the inception of the first Dynamic Duo—not that moment in the garden the spring before, or the first time a fae creature had fought criminals in the streets of Gotham, or the first time a glamour of red, green, and yellow had appeared at Batman's side. Those things had all been important, steps on the path that had led them here, but they were incomplete—because at the time, they had been, however unintentionally, a master and his kidnapped servant.

That wasn't Batman and Robin. Batman and Robin were _partners_. Batman and Robin were a _we_.

They couldn't have that, couldn't _be_ that, until the binding was broken, until Dick was human, until he'd had a choice to leave and had chosen instead to stay, of his own free will. Until Bruce himself had a choice, and had chosen in turn to keep him.

 _Family,_ Alfred's voice said in his memory, _is what we make of it, Master Bruce._

Then again, Alfred always had been the smart one, in the family.

/~*~/

"Batman?"

Bruce glanced down, seeing Dick hiding a massive yawn behind one green-gloved hand. He was almost swaying on his feet, the adrenaline and anger and grief long since faded out of his system, leaving him nothing more than a nine-year-old who was still awake at three-o-clock on Christmas morning, exhausted from the physical and emotional strain of the last few hours.

"Can we go home now?" Dick asked, once the yawn released him.

Bruce bent down and picked him up, tucking Dick against his side with only a slight grunt of effort at the extra weight of the boy's armor and gear. Dick immediately curled up against him, oblivious to the hard planes of the Batman suit, and pulled at the cape as if it was a blanket that he could wrap around him to take a nap.

"Yes, Robin," Bruce said, and aimed his grapple at the next building over. "Let's go home."

/~*~/


End file.
